


Lead the Way

by 13atoms (2Atoms)



Category: Iron Fist (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Davos needs a lot of TLC, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Roadtrip, Romance, Slow Burn, Some mentions of violence, redemption arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:55:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 82,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28058790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2Atoms/pseuds/13atoms
Summary: After spending almost two years documenting the legendary city of K’un-Lun, a journalist has found herself back in the real world. Close friends with both Davos and Danny, she tries to track them down in America only to learn that after everything which transpired, Davos is in prison. She decides to catch up with him.
Relationships: Davos (Marvel)/Reader
Comments: 26
Kudos: 18





	1. Prologue

A potent cocktail of disappointment and amusement sat heavy in your stomach as you read the scrap of paper in front of you. It was a crumpled notebook page, begrudgingly given to you by Danny’s unexpectedly-stern partner. After a terrifying conversation, and a lot of bargaining, she’d scribbled the words down.

Then, she had made you promise to never speak to her again.

_“New York State Penn, max. security,_

_Page Avenue.”_

Beneath the address, a phone number.

As you sat in your car, a wave of sudden heart-stopping reality washed over you as you processed how you had gotten here.

You were exhausted and wound up, still unused to the feeling of driving after so long away from roads. Your head pounded, irritated by the gentle patter of rain on the roof and quiet roar of a nearby highway. The parking lot you had pulled into was near-empty, barely more than a simple square of dusty ground, illuminated by the sweeping headlights of an occasional other driver swinging off the road to loiter too. You granted their illicit activities the same level of polite ignorance as they granted yours. No one here was making good choices.

The slip of paper in your hand symbolised so much. It was a direct line to the man you had been so desperate to see, and a souvenir of the horrifying conversation you’d had with Colleen.

Your recent journey to New York hadn’t been an easy one, especially given how long it had been since you spent time around so many people. K’un-Lun was not an easy place to leave, and you had made your own long journey back from the mountains just weeks after Davos left, struggling back into civilisation after so long as a journalist documenting the unique place.

K’un-Lun had begun as a research project, and become your home.

Now you had left behind a life of assimilating to a rural, simple way of living, and been thrust back into a world you barely recognised. On top of that, you were still processing everything that Colleen had told you. Each word had been a strike to your heart, her words resentful and mournful and aggressive as you had stood in her kitchen and heard her recount everything which had transpired since your friends Danny and Davos had left K’un-Lun. To hear about their fighting had hurt. About their respective power grabs and the path of blood and betrayal behind them.

The blow of learning Davos was in prison, with a trail of devastation and heartbreak behind him, was almost too much to bear.

When you left K’un-Lun, Davos had been the first person you’d sought out. Truthfully, you had really missed him. You had truly expected to head to New York and find Davos and Danny together, just taking too long to return to K’un-Lun, fighting the good fight side by side. You’d have no idea what to expect, stuck in the Himalayas, hearing no news from either of them.

K’un-Lun had made it easy to forget the real world, things like phones and oil changes for your car, rent and Instagram feeds. More than most, you were acutely aware that a lifetime there could make you unaware of the repercussions of doing what you thought was right, even if it didn’t align with the law. A law you had now learnt Davos had fallen foul of. You weren’t surprised.

There was no grey area here, no room for honour or tradition in law enforcement, you knew.

Davos wouldn’t have known that. You had almost forgotten it, after your two years spent away from the real world. Truthfully didn’t know Davos’ full story, only that you didn’t believe what had been reported in the papers Colleen had spread across her kitchen island with a stern glare.

She had been so offended you had referred to him your friend, looking at you as if you’d committed the very crimes Davos was accused of. You didn’t recognise the man in black and white on front pages, under bold headlines and surrounded by grisly details in print. You had bitten back tears as you tried to comprehend what he had done, each word bleaker than the last.

But you had come to New York for Davos. And you would find him.

The Davos you knew had been your friend, once upon a time, when you were a scared and underprepared investigative journalist, tracking down a lost city after fifteen years of it being unreachable. Whatever he had done, you only knew the Davos you’d met.

A man who was kind, and honourable, capable of cruelty but choosing not to partake in it.

The two sides of him couldn’t coexist in your head, and you’d spent the drive away from Colleen’s apartment trying to reconcile your own memories with the sheer hatred the woman had for him.

Your own memory of him was so much kinder. Even now, you owed him your life.

He had been near the pass, alone, as you scrambled towards the city. You had been a stupid young journalist, who had believed she could make the trek alone, weighed down by equipment and prepared to give up and die on the mountain ledge. Your stomach had lurched at the journey across narrow, icy ledges, your own potential grave haunting you at the bottom of each ravine you scaled past. You had doubted yourself with each slip of your foot or crumble of the rock beneath you, your body shaking with adrenaline and hunger, exhaustion and dehydration posing far bigger threats than you had expected alongside the physical ways the path attempted to shed you from itself.

You had been near breaking point when you saw his figure, your saviour on a desolate path.

Davos had raised his hands in hostility when he saw you, shouting out a rough demand to _identify_ _yourself_. You’d been unable to even speak. Exhausted and frozen half-to-death, you had fallen to your knees at his feet. He had quickly dropped his defensive stance, asking you a series of incomprehensible questions before guiding you to your destination. His home.

You could still remember the softness in his eyes, the gentleness of his hands on your shoulders as he took your backpack and muttered that you _needed to eat._

Davos was the first person you had met in K’un-Lun, the only person who had checked in on you each day you had lived there, made sure you had shelter, food, comfort beyond even what he had. He had shown interest in your work and vouched for you as you were rejected as an outsider. He had taken it upon himself to protect you, and you had never felt safer, even in a foreign land without the usual modern luxuries you longed for.

As you felt like a bumbling tourist, rather than the researcher you intended to be, Davos had offered you sage reassurance.

You had long overstayed your intended visit, so fascinated by the culture and truly fond of the people. In some ways, you had imagined staying forever, never leaving to finally write the article you had been commissioned for. The community there might have been enough for you, a lifetime not enough to learn everything about that place, Danny, Davos and a handful of others becoming such important friends to you that it seemed impossible to fathom leaving them behind to never return.

Only when Danny and Davos fought, the Iron Fist imbued in Danny, did you begin to consider leaving for civilisation. It had been the beginning of the end, and in some strange way all three of you had known it in the build up to that fight in the Sun Chamber. After Danny had fled K’un-Lun you had stayed for Davos, now an only-child and still grieving his lost destiny.

It had been hard, and your heart broke for him, but the two of you would get through it. And Danny would come back. And everything would be okay.

Then Davos had said goodbye to you, in his own strange way, on the day he left to find Danny in America.

The pair of you had a strange conversation, with stunted declarations of friendship and fondness for one another, and you’d quickly understood this was a last farewell. Midway through, he’d given you a lingering handshake, making you shiver from the contact and from the strangeness. Even before you fully understood what he was doing, the burning determination in his dark brown eyes had made you treat that conversation with a strange reverence and solemnity.

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?” You had asked.

With quick blinks and a nod of his head, Davos had confirmed it.

“You cannot tell anyone.”

He had apologised for leaving you, solemnly informed you he would miss you, but he refused to take you with him on such a dangerous quest. Duty tinged every word he had spoken, and you had thanked him with a hug, feeling his strong body tense under your arms. It had broken your heart how awkward he was with affectionate touch, nodding and stumbling teary-eyed as he broke free from your hug and left your room for the last time. Even without the Fist, he had left to fight for K’un-Lun.

Without Davos you’d had no reason to stay. His duty had taken him away from you, though you had sworn you would see him again.

You had spent a little longer in the city, seeing everything in new eyes, but it wasn’t the same without your rock of support.

You could never forget how he had helped you in an alien world. Cared for you, helped you navigate all the unfamiliarity of his home. You owed him the same. Or at least, you owed him a call as he awaited sentencing in a desolate prison, just months after you’d bidden him a teary goodbye.

With trembling fingers, you typed in the number Colleen had given you.

The dial tone clicked through straightaway, an automated message playing, before you waited for a phone operator.

_Yes, you’d pay the charges._

_Yes, you understood this call could be listened to._

Finally, she asked for a name. The operator had the bored tone of a woman who took this call a hundred times a day, sighing before you had even answered her question.

“Davos,” you replied.

“Surname?”

“I don’t… he doesn’t have one. I don’t think.”

You felt stupid. Did he have a _surname?_ You’d driven all this way, tracked down his sort-of brother’s sort-of friends, only to realise you couldn’t give a full name.

“He doesn’t have a surname,” she repeated back, deadpan, as though you were stupid.

“It’s complicated…”

The operator sighed on the other end of the line.

“And how do you know him?”

“Um, I’m a friend.”

The line went dead, and for a second you thought she had hung up on you. You sighed, pulled the dimmed light of the phone screen a little away from your face.

As static buzzed on the call you took in the fogged-up rocking of a car nearby, the shouts of teenagers on the other side of the carpark with smoke rising from the cracked window of their beaten-up old pickup. You watched the seconds tick by on the call screen, contemplating calling back the next day, the faint buzzing of the line the only thing telling you the operator hadn’t written you off as a waste of her time.

Suddenly you recognised the sound of an old phone receiver being taken off the hook, a masculine clearing of a throat, and a voice speaking on the other end of the call. You pulled the phone back to your ear.

“Who is this?” he demanded.

That serious, beautiful voice you’d missed. So much. You felt like an idiot grinning alone in your car, thankful no one was watching.

“Hi!”

You wished you could see his face, imagining him going suddenly slack-jawed as he recognised your voice. With a soft hum to yourself, you gave him a few seconds to try and place you.

“Do you remember me?” You asked, giving him a little more of your voice to identify.

For a second you paused, wondering if he even _did_. After all he had been through, how could he possibly remember some stupid woman who’d visited his hometown, barely anything more than a tourist. A _burden_ –

“Of course, I do. Of course”

You were at a loss for words, so overcome with happiness to hear his voice, and the sheer magnitude of how different your situations were now. It felt so real, suddenly, to hear his voice on the other end of a prison number.

You blinked as a new set of headlights entered the parking lot, the car cruising to a stop in front of you.

“What do you want?” he barked, dragging your attention back to the call.

“I’m sorry?”

You laughed, but found an uneasiness creeping into your chest at his hostility – something you’d never anticipated would be directed towards you.

“Why are you calling?”

“Christ, Davos! To check on you, to catch up!”

He was silent, and you wondered what he’d been through, to be so suspicious of your intentions all of a sudden.

“I was worried about you. You’re in prison,” you hoped he could hear the softness in your voice, the sheer disbelief. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” He grunted.

You could hear the clanging of metal, the shouting of other inmates in the background. You wondered how he would be coping, after spending all his life in quiet and solitude. He had never been so far from nature. It was hard to even picture the room he would be in, the prison clothes, bare mattresses, and high security doors.

It was hard to comprehend what he had done to end up there.

“Did you really… do all of that? What they said you did?”

“I did what was right.”

“Did you?” you bit back.

There was nothing but static and distant shouting on the other end of the line. With a sigh, you realised not to pry any further, for the sake of his lawyers finding him anything less than a life-sentence. This wasn’t a conversation to have over a recorded phone call.

“Can I come and see you tomorrow? I’d like to catch up.”

Really, nosiness drove you as much as your sincere, very real want to check on him. You refused to believe he was fine, certainly he sounded washed out on the phone, and the lifestyle difference between a federal prison and K’un-Lun just seemed… unimaginable.

You desperately hoped he was alright.

“You’re in New York?”

There was a sudden perk-up in his voice, a lightness and excitement which you hadn’t heard from him so far. It was a lightness like the one when you shared extra rations of food in the alleyways of the city, or cheekily gossiped and people-watched with him and his brother from a high window, laughing at each other as much as the street below.

He sounded fleetingly happy. It made your heart ache with a longing for K’un-Lun. You couldn’t imagine how much he would be missing his home.

“I am,” you confirmed, smiling as he exhaled heavily down the phone.

You wondered what that sigh meant. Relief? Exhaustion?

Had he missed you?

Suddenly he spoke up, voice steady and determined.

“Can you be here in two days’ time? Eight pm?” he demanded.

_Specific. And too long to wait._

“Um, Davos.. that’s not… I’ll be going soon. I’ll visit tomorrow though.”

You watched the slight shake of the fogged-up car ahead of you, sweaty hands pressed against the window, and reflected absentmindedly on how different this world was to the pocket of mountainous terrain you’d spent so much time in.

“Tomorrow then. Sunset,” Davos agreed firmly.

You had come all this way, what more was there to lose?

“Sure.”

“Wait by the main gates.”

“What?”

“Bring your car.”

_This call is being recorded_. _This call is being recorded_.

The warning played in your mind as loudly as if it were being blared through your phone speakers.

You could meet him at the visitor’s centre, surely? Sit opposite him whilst he was chained to one of those metal tables you’d seen on television, and finally allow yourself to reckon with the damage he’d caused, and the damage he’d sustained.

What did he mean _car_?

He called your name sharply, almost a command, and you dreaded to think where his mind was going, the ideas he was coming up with.

“What are you talking about?” you asked gently.

“Sunset.”

And with a click, he was gone.

You blinked against the sudden sweep of a torchlight against your face, squinting to see police officers the other side of the glass. They were walking on past your front bumper, a cop car nearby with the doors left open. You winced as they crossed too close, clearly trying to look menacing, but they didn’t stop to speak to you. The scarpering teens who were hotboxing their car seemed a much more appealing target, sending the cops running and their flashlights dancing across the parking lot floor, and you started your engine with a sigh.

No chance of sleeping here tonight, it seemed.

Davos’ words rang clear in your head as you drove to find a cheap hotel. You’d need to leave after breakfast to be at the prison in time – it was a long drive.

A quiet voice at the back of your mind wondered: _what was he planning?_

You couldn’t stop thinking about him, even after you’d paid by the hour for your room and been warned there would be no motel breakfast. The starchy sheets of your rented bed made it hard for you to sleep as you tried to shake the sinking feeling in your stomach. Questions and worries kept you awake, the thought of Davos curled on a prison cot miles away, the strange sense of trepidation which had haunted you all through check-in and showering that night.

The conviction in his voice, his surprise at hearing from you, the way he’d demanded ‘ _what do you want?’_ It all added up to something unsettling. A sickening feeling of fear sank down to your stomach. What were you walking into? What had he _done?_

_Was he the same man?_

He’d had no trial, still waiting on the case to reach the courts. He hadn’t been offered bail, and you couldn’t help your dark amusement at the thought of him stood in a courtroom, trying to understand all of the bureaucracy and paperwork around him. He probably wouldn’t see a need for it. Certainly, there was none of that in K’un-Lun. They dealt with justice rather differently, in freshly-broken scars and in loss of honour.

_How had he adapted to the city?_ you wondered. _Were credit cards and phones still foreign to him?_ Leather shoes and suits hardly seemed his style, but you could find photos of him online dressed as sharply as the lawyers around him. You had stared at them for hours, trying to imagine him picking between a slim-fit or a relaxed-fit Oxford shirt. It didn’t make sense.

Davos had always been clever, determined, stoic in his black-and-white view of right and wrong, with an inhuman sense of devotion and work ethic for his causes. It didn’t surprise you that he would be adaptable, recognising the forms power took in a different culture, teaching himself the tools he needed to follow his own moral compass.

As you showered and coaxed your car onto the highway the next morning you tried to imagine how Davos had adapted to this world. You couldn’t imagine a reality where he hadn’t clashed with the law, or been immensely challenged by the grey of New York – both in architecture and in morality.

Perhaps he’d be disgusted with you now, knowing the kind of world you were from. In K’un-Lun he’d been fascinated, always asking about the outside world, and you had given him details about your previous life sparingly. Trying, maybe patronizingly, to hide anything too mind blowing. To make yourself seem a little more noble in his eyes. Less soft, more respectable.

He knew everything now.

Hours passed like seconds and the day slipped away until you were stretching out your legs in the visitor parking lot of the prison Colleen had directed you to. Entering the imposing reception and signing forms, talking to the guards, being searched, it all happened on autopilot. 

It was only as you sat on the jarringly cold metal of a bench-table that you were awoken from your waking dream. The sudden sensation made everything painfully real, the visitors room in all of its horrid acoustics and cheap white paint, the other prisoners and their families, curious looks and sobs and couples being warned not to get too close. The noises merged together, echoing across the bare concrete floor in a sports-hall sized space, and you found yourself staring for just a second too long at the stories unfolding around. Apologetically, you forced yourself to stare down at your nervously interlocked hands on the dull, scratched surface of the steel table in front of you.

Then, suddenly, Davos was being led towards you.

It was impossible not to stare.

He looked so different, and yet the same. His hair was still buzzed short, but just slightly too long. He had a slight stubble, slightly too short. His skin was slightly too pale, washed out from exhaustion, only exaggerated by the dark circles under his eyes and the bright orange of his standard regulation prison clothes.

You tried to stand and greet him, to circle the table, but a pushy guard warned you back from him with a glare and a wave of his hand. As you sat again, chastised, you realised Davos’ hands were cuffed. You watched uncomfortably as Davos mirrored you, sitting just feet away, but too far to reach you should he decide to. His guards barely backed up, clicking the chain from his handcuffs to a metal loop on the table. Like they were chaining a dog.

You felt sick.

None of the other prisoners were this tightly watched. Some weren’t even being monitored, seemingly trusted to hug and chat and gesticulate without being restrained by cuffs and burly guards. You wondered what possible trouble he’d gotten up to, for the prison to be so cautious with him.

Maybe his reputation simply preceded him. After all, he didn’t rely on weapons like the criminals who surrounded him. For better or worse, his body was the only weapon he would need to take down anyone in the room.

He’d clearly been keeping in shape, even while locked up and eating whatever horrific vegetarian options he was offered. He’d lost a little muscle mass, but you still caught yourself fighting to not let your eyes roam over the wide set of his shoulders beneath the orange of his overshirt.

“Hey,” you greeted softly.

He said your name as if he was trying to convince himself you were real, a desperate plea. You looked up at him as seriously as you could muster, wishing you could reach your hands across the table far enough to offer comfort, even if he wouldn’t take it.

Then his mouth closed, his lips pressed tightly together as he just _stared_. You wished he would say something, anything, a million questions overwhelming you from the inside and the surreal room overwhelming your senses.

“How are you?” You finally asked, afraid of the answer, kicking yourself for not being able to think of anything better.

“Fine.”

His reply wasn’t curt, or rude, nor was it honest. But what else could you say?

“I’m glad you’re back,” he continued.

His voice was thick with emotion, but you couldn’t bear to pry under the watchful gaze of the prison guards, or risk him becoming upset in full sight of the other prisoners nearby. This wasn’t the meeting you wanted, in earshot of so many people, but you were glad to see him. Some part of you couldn’t even imagine him existing outside of K’un-Lun.

You gave him a slight smile.

“I’m glad you’re okay. Well… you know,” you trailed off, unwilling to say anything else, making a strange gesture with your hands.

Davos nodded in understanding.

The conversation went quiet, and you found yourself looking around the busy room, wondering which of these men Davos knew. None of them, you suspected. He would likely keep to himself in a place like this.

You watched as a prisoner was guided back to the security door in the far corner of the room, calling a heartfelt goodbye to the man still sat at his table. His eyes trailed across you and Davos briefly before he disappeared, and you noticed a bruise on the man’s face.

You hoped Davos hadn’t been picking fights. He didn’t seem injured, but you worried, letting your eyes trail across the small amount of skin you could see, trying to spot any sign–

“What do you drive?”

“Hm?”

“Your car. You said you drove here,” Davos asked impatiently.

His obsession with the car didn’t sit right with you, but you let it slide. He was under a lot of pressure. Maybe it was just polite conversation….

“A Chevvy, it’s a big 4x4.”

He nodded, as though the car brand meant anything to him, and you gave him a curious look as he seemed to consider the answer to your question.

“Fast?” Davos asked.

“It’s alright,” you laughed uncomfortably, the noise echoing joylessly around the concrete meeting room, “does the job. It’s comfy, though.”

It was your pride and joy, the last thing you’d bought before you left for your long journey through China all those years ago, kept in mint condition by a trusted friend. If nothing else, you’d been reassured that on your return, you would have that car.

It had greeted you with all the comfort and familiarity of a childhood home, and after a bit of TLC, was right as rain.

“What color?” Davos continued.

“Black.”

“Good.”

You smiled at him bemusedly, wondering what was going on behind his hardened eyes, where the frown on his face was coming from.

Far too much of this conversation had been dominated by your damned car. He wondered why you cared. But at least you were talking about something.

“Thanks,” you joked. “Now how are you doing? Is there anything I can bring you?”

“Nothing.”

His deadpan answer wiped the smile off your face, and you were quickly reminded of your first weeks in K’un-Lun, how you had agonised over whether Davos was irritated by you. His sincerity and lack of niceties always made you paranoid that you were bothering him, that you weren’t wanted in his focussed, organised life. Even after he’d saved you, defended you and argued for you, you suspected he disliked you. Only when Danny had explained and brought out his playful side, did you understand. It was just how he was.

Still, it was unsettling. You had expected excitement to see you, gratitude. Instead he was making you unnerved, almost scaring you. You glanced at the handcuff which kept him attached to the table, the short chain which you had no doubt would not prevent him from harming anyone sat the other side if he really wanted to.

Was he the monster Colleen believed?

He didn’t look it. He looked strangely powerless. His proper posture was jarringly out of place, with the flimsy orange material of his prison uniform swamping his torso, awkwardly tight around his shoulders. You longed for a conversation like the ones you’d had with in in K’un-Lun – deep and nearly philosophical in nature. You had enjoyed his honesty, his sincere lack of ego. Even in the face of a life of punishment and being pushed towards unattainable perfection, he was selfless and kind. Never had you known someone you could trust so wholly, who refused to lie to you. It had been so refreshing.

And yet sat opposite him in a New York prison, exchanging meaningless small talk, you couldn’t shake the feeling he was hiding something from you.

Was he even the man you had known? Colleen had described a beast driven to cruelty and horrors in his quest for power. Senseless violence and egomania punctuated every tale she told about him, his name spat from her tongue like it was bitter to hold within her mouth.

Guilt immediately chased the shot of relief you felt when a prison guard informed the pair of you that you’d elapsed your allowed time for today. You shouldn’t have been happy to leave him here, you told yourself. But he had you on edge.

Whether it was time or circumstance which had damaged your once-close relationship, something had changed.

Never before had you been afraid to ask him deep questions, to discuss big plans and the past. Now you were struggling for conversation – about the bad water pressure, the differences in climate, the oddities of New York.

With a sad smile you stood, crossing to Davos’ side of the table, into his open arms.

As he pulled you into a hug, you felt him against you for the first time since he’d left K’un-Lun. In fact, he was the first person you had hugged, since that day in K’un-Lun. Thin chain dug into your side, his handcuffs into your back, and you couldn’t care less.

Your eyes were open, and you saw the guards hovering, ready to pull you apart should he decide to constrict around you like a snake.

But he wouldn’t.

You closed your eyes and let yourself pull him as tight to you as you could manage, feeling the tense of his shoulders as he held you so strongly you could hardly breathe, his head on your shoulder in such an intimate way you could hardly believe this was the same man you had known.

“Stay in your car. Wait for me. Half an hour.”

His words were whispered hot against your ear, and you shivered at the way his breath ghosted across your cheek, his fingers respectfully placed in a tight clasp against your back.

Looking up again, you could see the nervousness on the guards’ faces behind him, fingers twitching for their weapons as he held you. Obviously they knew as well as anyone how easily he could crush you in his arms. The thought made your heart speed up embarrassingly.

_Did you even know him anymore?_

“Thank you for coming. It means more than you could know.”

The words made your heart warm, a tinge of sadness at his vulnerability, and the realisation he did still have some of the kind man you had known inside of him. Finally, he sounded like himself.

And you had to go.

He separated from you, bowing his head slightly with a tight smile, and you frowned as you struggled to read him.

“Of course,” you stammered, turning to follow the guard.

With one last look back at him, at his disorienting appearance and suddenly slumped posture, you left.


	2. A long drive

Stepping out into the evening air, you sighed. Your car was parked close to the doors, and you hurried to it quickly, made uneasy by the harsh shadows the overhead floodlights cast around the parking lot. When you hand was on the unlocked doorhandle of your car you took pause, staring up at the starless sky above you. How long had you been in there? The time must have flown, even through awkward silences and agonising small talk.

The world was pitch black beyond the imposing glare of the lights.

Climbing into the driver seat and slamming the door closed behind you, you felt as though you could breathe for the first time since entering the premises. With your head resting precariously on the steering wheel, you could feel the hot burn of tears behind your eyes.

This catch-up had been your last plan before returning to real life. You had hoped it might be a happier one, that perhaps you might find Davos in a hotel or an apartment, your paths crossing pleasantly, a few days of catching up before both of you returned to the paved, certain paths of your lives.

He would go back to his family in K’un-Lun, live out the duties of the second-best and pretend it didn’t eat him from the inside. You hoped he might find some peace in seeing more of the world, perhaps re-evaluating the self-hatred and failure you had seen simmering inside of him since Danny almost beat him to death and acquired the Iron Fist.

Davos’ life looked so far from even your worst-case scenarios, you had no idea how to process it. But as the stitching of the leather steering wheel bit into your forehead, and your eyes burned with tears, you regretted ever letting him leave for New York alone.

Still, he had his path now. Stunted and uphill, foggy and unknown to him, but still walkable.

Ahead, your own future seemed to have blurred. There were notes to be transcribed in your bag, photos to be developed, the small matter of finding rent and a random city to return to.

K’un-Lun had been your biggest gamble, and now it was kicking you in the teeth. The magazine which had funded your expedition was failing to answer your calls. You had no one to go back to, no friends who seemed reachable now, after you had essentially made yourself a missing persons case by extending your stay in a remote place with no phone signal.

Your only two friends made from the expedition were no help, one lost to a life of vigilante crime fighting, the other behind bars, awaiting trial for crimes beyond your wildest imagination.

Tears finally came as you contemplated the enormity of what had happened. The unsettling way Davos had treated you, seeing him so beaten down, it was the last straw.

K’un-Lun had left you with nothing. After two years of your life, you had your own memories, your notes, your photos, and nothing else to show for it.

You realised that you had no idea which way to go after leaving the prison. Left or right, it made no difference. You had no destination.

A glimpse of movement outside the window made you jump, hands gripping the wheel tight as you held your breath in fear, not daring to look around. The self-defence Davos and Danny had delighted in teaching you seemed so meaningless as you shivered in fear at the thought of who might be outside your window.

You turned the key in the ignition carefully, beyond glad when the engine turned over first time, and looked up just in time to catch movement.

Someone was running around your car. Distantly you could hear the buzz of a generator, see the floodlights flicker startlingly off and back on to their full blinding brightness every few seconds. You blinked in frustration, desperate to spot the person moving around, and praying they would go away. A blur of orange caught your eye, and you felt as though your heart was about to explode from your chest. Your hands were shaking as you guided the car softly into reverse, terrified to look around, half-expecting the toothy grin of a murderer right outside your windshield.

Shoes on gravel outside your car.

Another flicker of the lights.

_Off._

_On._

A silhouette appeared at the window, and you muffled a scream, the car left idling as your feet froe on the pedals. It was a familiar profile, one you had seen illuminated by the rising sun in the Himalayan mountains. The profile of a man who was in prison.

Breathing seemed impossible, as you saw him move, reaching for the door handle.

The nervous expressions of the guards as he hugged you sprang to mind, the dig of his handcuffs into your back. Fear was in everything, the tensing of your hands on the wheel, the sweat on your palms, your shiver as you heard a doorhandle give.

As the lights shut off once more the passenger door was wrenched open, the car almost shaking with the force the man threw himself into the seat beside you. You forgot to breathe in your shock.

“Davos?”

 _Lights on._ You blinked, eyes watering from shock, the car’s engine purring beneath your feet.

Scanning around for prison guards, you were shocked to see no one following. It seemed unlikely Davos’ escape had gone unnoticed, if the blood on his arms was anything to go by, and you imagined that helicopters would be overhead in seconds.

“Drive.”

His voice was firm, barely above a growl. He was panting, ducking down in the passenger footwell, the strict instruction in his voice making you forget to hesitate for a moment.

“No! Davos I… how are you out?”

“I need you to drive. Now.”

You obeyed without conscious thought, too freaked out to evaluate exactly what you were doing. As you pulled out of the lot you kept your lights switched off, staring straight ahead until you were out of eyeshot of the gates.

 _Fuck_.

“Head away from the city,” he muttered, hunched in the footwell beside you.

His voice brought you back to reality as you headed toward the highway by default, and you suddenly wanted to pull over.

“Oh my god,” you repeated to yourself, panic suddenly setting in, your initial rush of adrenaline fading. “Oh god.”

“Please, just keep driving. I can explain later.”

His comforting words didn’t do much to soothe you, but the heavy traffic around you left you with very little choice but to obey. You tried to focus on your breathing, on carefully keeping up with the cars ahead, ignoring the man unfolding his body into your passenger seat.

Davos pulled his orange shirt off and shoved it beneath the passenger seat, leaving him in a white long-sleeved undershirt. The thing was littered with tears in the fabric, and a nasty bloodstain on his arm, but he seemed unaffected by the wounds. He was looking into every mirror he could see, twisting his neck to watch out the back window, no doubt cataloguing the face of every driver around you, trying to spot red and blue lights.

After an impossibly long time, he relaxed back into his seat.

“Thank you for picking me up.”

You laughed. Sharp, hysterical, humourless. All you could do was laugh, eyes on the road, hands clutching the wheel. You found yourself unable to believe the situation. Nothing felt real. You half expected to look across and find yourself alone in your car, having finally lost your mind. Twenty-four hours ago you’d nervously phoned him in prison cell. He couldn’t _be here_.

“I wasn’t aware of what I signed up to, I can promise you that,” you jabbed.

As you merged lanes you looked across at Davos, letting yourself try and read his face for the first time. His expression was blank, but his vice-tight hold on the roof handle betrayed his worry.

Oh, god.

You’d helped him escape _prison_. And it had happened so quickly, you’d barely had a say in the matter.

He had killed people. Even Colleen had been afraid of him. He was in your car.

“What the fuck,” you muttered to yourself, desperate to close your eyes and hide from the world.

You needed a moment to process what was happening, and instead you were trying to navigate late commuter traffic.

A speed camera up ahead made you gasp.

“Fuck, Davos! They’ve got cameras, and…” you were mainly murmuring to yourself, so in shock from Davos’ actions that you couldn’t bear to talk to him.

“It’ll be okay.”

Agitation of drivers ahead, weaving through lanes and honking their horns, was enough to distract you. For a few moments you focused on nothing but the road ahead, trying desperately to forget yourself.

As the city lights disappeared in your rear view, panic rose up in your throat again.

You flicked the radio on, wincing at the volume, before realising it was too much. You couldn’t stand it. At the introduction of a news bulletin, Davos’ hand brushed yours away from the controls, and he listened in silence.

You tuned the sound out as the road ahead cleared, and you merged onto an interstate highway. You refused to let your focus leave the road for even a moment, although there were scarce few cars ahead to watch. The radio droned on in the background, and your fingers twitched against the steering wheel.

The clock on the dash told you it had been less than half an hour since Davos clambered into your car in the prison car park.

It felt like a distant memory, and as if it had only just happened, all simultaneously.

You couldn’t process it.

Something was wrong. You sped up, going as fast as you could without risking being pulled over, a sick feeling in your stomach as Davos played with the radio, finally managing to flicking through channels and pausing at news broadcasts.

Nothing.

No prisoner alerts, no sign of his name and description being blasted across emergency channels.

“Why aren’t they looking for you?” you demanded. “They must know you’re gone.”

“I was subtle, slipped away after the journey back to my cell.”

You shook your head. _No_. That’s not how prisons worked, someone would have noticed…

Half an hour had passed.

Someone would notice.

Taking advantage of the easy driving, you looked him up and down, trying to convince yourself it was really him. Davos. From K’un-Lun. Sweet, overprotective Davos. A smudge of crimson on his white sleeve caught your eye – mainly because the stain was so damn _big_.

“The blood. Whose is it?”

“Mine.”

Whether he thought your gasp was a symptom of relief or distress, Davos ignored it.

“How the hell did you escape?” Came your next question, furious and impressed in equal measure.

“I learnt the pattern of the place, it moved like a beating heart. And I meditated each night, alone. The guards never checked on me anymore. They won’t know I’m gone until morning.”

You looked at the spattering of blood up his forearm, seeping through his torn shirt sleeve, now noticing the thin cut beneath it. The wound was no longer bleeding, but you winced at the length of it.

“Razor wire. Simple security, but quite nasty in places,” he noted, with as much nonchalance as one might have commenting on the weather.

A reminder of who you were in the car with settled in your stomach, and you caught yourself flinching away from him slightly. He had climbed over prison-grade razor wire. _Razor_ wire. _Fuck_.

“You’re insane. Davos this is illegal. Helping an escaping criminal, that’s illegal.”

You winced at the word as it left your mouth, knowing Davos saw himself as nothing of the sort. He bristled.

“If you knew… if you knew the kind of things which go on in that festering wound of a city… the people I have _saved_ from themselves…”

“It must have been hard,” you interrupted bluntly.

He paused his building rant.

You glanced around again, determined not to let Davos get worked up. You didn’t know how to handle his anger. Especially now, you couldn’t cope with his anger. But you could try your best to understand, a little. Transplanted from everything he knew, in a world of new people and new morals, you had yet another pang of regret for not going with him. Perhaps things could have been different, if he’d had a trusted friend beside him.

When he’d lost the Iron Fist to Danny in K’un-Lun you’d been afraid for Davos – for what he might do. You had seen hopelessness and self-loathing in him, not for the first time, but magnified to a level which seemed unimaginable to cope with.

His mental wounds had been just as gnarly as the physical battering he’d taken. His self-blame and self-hate had built a blockade around him, made him a shell of his former self. And you had been forced to watch.

You hadn’t been able to get through to him. Danny hadn’t bothered trying. His mother… you’d never wanted to intervene in the lives of your subjects more, when he told you how he’d deserved her treatment.

The Davos beside you now seemed a world away from that mistreated son. Instead you saw a man, staring out at the tail lights of traffic, risking your safety after a damn prison escape.

“How did you get out?” you asked suddenly.

He looked at you, amusement on his lips.

“I climbed.”

“No. You can’t… climb out of a high security prison. That’s not possible.”

“I told you. I had a plan.”

You refused to believe it.

Though, if anyone could truly do what he was claiming, it was Davos.

“I handled the lights, and the sensors. No one will know I’m gone until morning.” He reminded you, as though you had forgotten some obvious, self-evident fact. “We just need to get as much distance as we can between us and that wretched place.”

He couldn’t know that. Davos _couldn’t_ know that you were safe.

With the speed information travelled, the cameras and the guard checks, the fence alarms, the wide-reaching power of law enforcement… They would know you had visited him before he escaped, know the car you were driving and where your credit card was used and–

“Hang on.”

Davos protested as you took the next exit, pulling up to a gas station despite his ardent complaining.

He hissed at you to get back in the car as you left him there, resting his forehead in his hand. You `ignored him stony-faced as you took your purse from the car.

If he had dragged you into his ‘Thelma & Louise’ bullshit, you would be prepared. Running out of gas would be a stupid way to get caught.

Stony faced, concealing your anger at him, you took out as much cash as the ATM allowed. You filled up the gas tank. You bought bags of food supplies and bottled water. As you paid, praying your card wouldn’t decline after you had so thoroughly emptied your bank account, you realised the sheer stupidity of what you were doing.

The transaction went through with an unassuming _beep_.

“Have a good evening!”

The chipper cashier’s voice made you wince as you smiled begrudgingly back, a ludicrous number of bags cutting into your fingers as you wrestled your way out of the store. The amount you’d just spent had probably made his evening.

“Thanks,” you called back, trying not to grumble.

Crossing the forecourt you couldn’t ignore the _wrong_ feeling in your stomach, the punch of ‘ _this is real_ ’ which made your entire body ache with a sensation you couldn’t quite place. There was a strange trepidation in your stomach as you crossed the forecourt, knowing he was there.

 _And yet… this was exciting_ , you admitted to yourself. _Just a little._

Davos was nowhere to be seen as you returned to the car. You finally spotted him crouched in the footwell as you tucked away your purchases and the cash in the boot alongside your travel bag and suitcases. He only unravelled himself minutes later as you joined the highway, his panic over as he muttered _good idea_ , returning to fiddling with the radio.

“How many days’ worth of supplies do we have?”

“I have no idea,” you told him honestly. “Check the trunk. We have maybe five-hundred miles of fuel?”

Your passenger nodded solemnly, and you bit your lip at the realisation he was making this up as much as you were. Would that be enough? Too much?

Neither of you had a clue.

But you continued driving into the night, determined to head west, avoiding major cities.

 _Away,_ was all that mattered. Away from New York. From the prison. From the things he’d done.

Your eyes grew heavier with each passing mile, and you regretted not picking up something to help you stay awake. It seemed too risky to pull over for a coffee now, each minute signalling another chance someone would notice the missing prisoner. Davos remained still, almost statue-like in his position. The prison-orange of his trousers was almost reflective under passing lights.

“What’s the plan?” you’d asked him, over and over.

He said nothing.

So you kept driving.

When the clock on your dash reached midnight, you were too jittery to continue. After one too many near misses with the central reservation, Davos insisted:

“Let me take over.”

“You don’t have a license,” you responded robotically.

A beat passed, and you felt the pull of your eyelids, desperate to let you sleep. Davos stayed quiet.

“Not that it matters.”

For the first time in hours, you wanted to laugh. _Of course_ it didn’t matter. You let yourself smile a little: a traffic offense would be the least of your worries if you got pulled over.

“We can find a layby for a bit, so I can nap?” You offered, but Davos shook his head.

“I’ll drive. You sleep.”

Your foot hit the gas a little too hard as a driver pulled out from your blind spot, making you jump at the near miss.

“Please?”

Davos’ firm tone was all it took for you to begin looking for places to stop the car and switch seats.

“Can you even drive?” You yawned to him, and Davos nodded firmly.

The roads were straight, there were barely any other drivers around, and you were miles from civilisation. You took him at his word. Truthfully, exhaustion overrode your hesitation to let Davos drive the one valuable possession you had left. With your fitful sleep last night, you desperately needed rest. And you wouldn’t get it if the two of you were arrested because you fell asleep at the wheel.

You pulled over, shivering in the night air as he threw open his door and jumped from his seat. You passed him as you more sedately crossed the bonnet, and found that you couldn’t meet his eye outside of a moving vehicle.

Stood for just a second side by side, free from the strange space of the car interior, he seemed so much more _real._ An actual, solid person. Not a memory, not a monster. Just… a person.

Quickly you pulled the door closed behind you, fastening your belt in the passenger seat. Davos spent a moment adjusting his seat, and you watched as he stalled for time, before finally reaching for the ignition.

“Okay?” You prompted.

He nodded silently, the car lurching under his rusty control.

You gripped the seat as he drove out of the layby, joining road overly carefully, checking every single mirror. Perhaps you wouldn’t die with Davos behind the wheel after all. As he got up to speed on the highway you allowed your shoulders to relax, trying not to stare at his profile as he focused fully on the tarmac ahead.

He was only distracted when you moved, glancing at you curiously as you leant forward from your seat.

“Eyes on the road,” you mumbled, resting one hand on the driver seat cushion beside his thigh as you found the cruise control, explaining each button to him as you set the speed to a safe pace. You were close enough to smell him, to feel him breathing beside you as you reached to demonstrate the car controls, his hands inches from yours.

The car jolted as the cruise control kicked in, making you suddenly remember to _behave._

“Now you can take your feet off,” you told him, pushing yourself out of his personal space as he reluctantly pried his foot off the gas.

“Helpful,” was his only reply.

 _Ingrate_.

You let your head fall against the window, pulling your legs up close to yourself and fidgeting to get comfortable.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” you yawned, “letting you drive my car, for starters.”

Davos’ low chuckle was a noise you hadn’t heard in months, and it pulled an involuntary smile to your face in an instant. Suddenly the night chill felt as if it was seeping into your very bones. You turned up the heating.

He rolled his shoulders, glancing nervously at you, tapping the steering wheel.

It was paradoxically easier to relax, knowing he was as worried as you were. He was relentlessly checking the speedometer, glancing around, fiddling with the controls of the car, and yet you weren’t concerned. It was as though his uncertainty crossed out your own.

If he was paying attention, you knew you could count yourself safe.

With a deliberate roll of his shoulders, he relaxed back into the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel. You tried not to watch the symmetrical flex of his biceps as he gripped tightly, his muscles outlined even through his shirt in the meagre light of the car dashboard.

“I’m sorry for the stress I have caused you,” he told you suddenly.

“Stress? That’s an understatement.”

He laughed, and you let yourself chuckle too.

Sleep evaded you, even as Davos proved his ability to not-kill the pair of you, peering up at road signs as the pair of you had a mumbled conversation about where to head. You told him cities to head towards which you only vaguely knew yourself, and he nodded with the solemnity of a soldier receiving orders, muttering the names to himself. Devoting your words to memory.

As exhaustion claimed you, the need to rest overriding the discomfort of trying to sleep in a car seat, Davos’ voice suddenly pulled you back to stark wakefulness.

“You were crying earlier.”

“Hm?”

The grumble of your voice didn’t deter him as he fumbled with the cruise control, urging the car just a little faster. You were surprised to see him sticking to the speed limits.

“In the car. You were crying.”

With a sigh, you accepted what he was talking about. You had expected him to notice, but hoped he wouldn’t. He had always been irritatingly good at reading you. Perhaps some side effect of your life debt to his generosity. Or perhaps he was more empathetic than you gave him credit for. He always seemed especially attuned to you.

“I was overwhelmed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” you corrected. “It was a lot of… other things. I just found it hard, seeing you in there. Like that.”

You were overtaking a truck, making you flinch as you hurtled past the huge eighteen-wheeler in a rush of distorted sound and light, but Davos seemed unaffected beside you. He was only focusing on your words.

He cleared his throat, eyes never leaving the road as he spoke:

“Your voice was the first friendliness I’ve heard in a long time.”

You recognised an admission when you heard it, even if his tone was casual. You reached sleepily across the console to rest a hand on his forearm, feeling him flinch slightly. Physical comfort wasn’t exactly a part of his upbringing.

You’d tried your best to teach him the value of touch in K’un-Lun, but it had proven largely fruitless. He wasn’t used to affection, let alone physical affection. You couldn’t change that. Still, he had never pushed you away, never denied a group hug with you and Danny, or denied you warmth on a cold night.

You should have known something was wrong when he invited you to hug in the prison visiting room – he had only wanted the chance to whisper.

Only once had he reached out for you properly: your hug the night he left.

You blinked, pulled into the present, as he cleared his throat.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” he confessed, and you laughed lightly in response.

“I was a bit more prepared on the journey back,” you smiled, “managed to not almost-freeze-to-death for the descent.”

He changed lane suddenly, unnecessarily, shaking your hand free of its place on his body.

You wrapped both arms around yourself, withdrawing from him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Davos?”

It had been a running joke between the pair of you, that you weren’t cut out for wilderness life. You’d whined about missing technology the whole time, and Davos had indulged your complaints with fond eyerolls, insisting you didn’t know the meaning of survival.

He didn’t realise how right he was. In truth, K’un-Lun had been a time of desperation for you. You had expected to die on that journey. Davos would never know how much his help had saved you.

You frowned, trying to see his expression. His tone had sounded heavy, his expression stormy.

“Davos, I’m fine!” you tried to joke, making some attempt to lighten the mood.

You weren’t sleepy anymore.

“K’un-Lun vanished,” he finally ground out, words curt as he pronounced the city properly in a way you still struggled to master.

You hit your head on the window in shock, jaw dropping as you looked around at him. His mouth was set in a grim line, a vein visibly protruding in his neck as he stared at the road ahead.

“Are you serious?”

You had rarely known him to be anything otherwise. He didn’t dignify your question with an answer.

“Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

He rolled his neck, glancing quickly at the few cars around you, a slight quiver in his lip.

“What do you mean, gone? Like, the people? Everything?”

He nodded tightly, fingers gripping the steering wheel tightly, and you exhaled shakily.

“Oh my god. How?”

“No idea.”

His voice was gruff, and you stopped questioning him for fear of upsetting him too much. Not least because you didn’t want him crying whilst you were going so fast on a highway.

“I was afraid you were lost with the rest.”

All you could do was shake you head in the dark cabin of the car, knowing he might not see.

Your mind was reeling. You couldn’t begin offer sympathy. Not while you were struggling to process so much yourself. The silence stretched on for far longer than you’d expected, the minutes racing by as the shock set in. You jumped when his voice boomed slightly too loudly through the car.

“You must have a life here,” Davos said suddenly, as though he hadn’t realised it before. “Family, friends, a home…”

You shrugged.

“Not really.”

He didn’t need to know how wrong things had gone. Not while he was hurting so much. Your problems suddenly felt laughable, tiny.

K’un-Lun had vanished.

“I have nothing, now,” he told you quietly. “No home. Danny hates me. The Fist is lost… being used far from its purpose…”

“Danny’s got it?” You interrupted.

Davos didn’t reply. You sighed, resting your head against the glass and letting the passing lights blind you.

“So what’s your plan?” you asked.

Evading arrest felt like the first port of call. Davos’ words surprised you:

“I can drop you off. Then you tell the police I kidnapped you. It would be just another crime to add to the long list I have been accused of.”

You didn’t reply. How could you, after what he had told you?

_I have nothing._

His words echoed in your mind, a ghost unable to escape your skull, and your heart broke for him. You thought of the man who’d saved your from freezing on a mountain pass. The man you’d helped you learn about his home, even with no reward for himself, with barely any understanding of your purpose there.

He hadn’t even recognised the word journalist when you’d first met.

So giving, so dutiful, to be rewarded like _this_.

“I wish I had been there. When K’un-Lun vanished,” he confessed.

“God, Davos! Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I would know what happened. I could have been with my mother, with the others…”

“There’s nothing you could have done,” you told him firmly, not particularly caring if the words were true.

He couldn’t blame himself. _Surely?_

“You can’t know that. The Iron Fist has never been taken before. Perhaps if I had been stronger, not allowed its power to be stolen, if I had brought Danny back faster, things could be different.”

You stayed silent, listening to the trundle of road beneath the tires, watching the clock change digits.

“And even if it hadn’t been able to save them, I should have been there.”

“You would have died,” you whispered, feeling your voice swallowed up by the sounds around the car.

Your words made Davos tense up, but he didn’t argue.

“I’m glad you’re here,” you offered. “Glad you’re safe. After _somehow_ escaping a prison.”

He shrugged before turning to check the road, a shred of pride accompanying his little gesture of ‘it wasn’t that hard’. You rolled your eyes.

“Only you, Davos.”

You were finally succumbing to sleep, eyes desperate to close after so long spent driving and worrying. It had been an exhausting day, one which stretched on far too long. As you were about to escape wakefulness, finally tuning out the jostling of the car, you heard Davos’ voice.

“How has the _journalism_ been, since you left?”

Even with your eyes closed, you allowed yourself a soft smile. He had never quite grasped how writing about things could be a job, back in K’un-Lun, but you supposed he would have a better understanding now.

“It took a long time to get back. I’m barely better at hiking than when you found me,” you teased, pleased to wring a hollow laugh from Davos.

“The photos are developed, I’m just… struggling to get a publisher. I lost my job. They’d hired someone else by the time I got back.”

“I’m sorry.”

His sincerity warmed your heart a little, and you allowed your bleary eyes to open, taking him in across the darkness of the car.

“Thanks. It’s okay though. I’m glad I got to document everything… before…”

Davos nodded quickly, and you knew there was nothing else to say.

You curled up, hugged your knees, and tried to sleep.

*

The sun woke you, straining and pale against the early morning sky.

A tendon flexed in Davos’ neck as he drove, the radio muted, and you took in the sight with bleary eyes.

When you yawned, his eyes crept to your face, before snapping back to the road.

“Morning,” his voice was raspy from disuse.

You allowed yourself to enjoy it for a second.

“Morning.”

As your eyes adjusted to the light, you looked through the windscreen, pleasantly surprised to see the car’s bodywork intact and the pair of you not tangled in a car-wreck.

_Good driving, Davos._

The only traffic around was an occasional transporter truck, Davos effortlessly overtaking them as they hauled in the slow lane. It was too early for commuter traffic, if there even _were_ commuters here.

“Where are we?”

Davos reeled off a list of small town names which you didn’t have a hope in hell recognising, ones he’d recalled from signs, presumably not knowing what was a recognisable city and what was a tiny local place. Nothing sounded familiar, and you just resigned to just _not knowing_. You would pass a sign soon, and work it out.

In the meantime, you really needed to pee.

The car _pinged_ a warning noise, asking for fuel, and Davos scowled at it.

“It needs gas,” he informed you, and you fought down a laugh.

“Already?”

Sure enough, the tank was a quarter full. It seemed his confidence had grown massively overnight, if he’d gotten through that much gas.

“Unfortunately,” he scowled.

Typical Davos. He probably thought the car was like a failing young student, not dedicated enough to transporting its owner.

“Next gas station we see,” you told him, “turn off.”

Not for the first time, you wondered how the hell you’d ended up here.

A dusty, near-abandoned gas station approached in the distance, and Davos took the exit unprompted.

Refill the tank, pee, brush your teeth, buy snacks… you did it all on autopilot. The old cathode-ray tv perched behind the dusty counter blared indiscernible sound, subtitles flickering across the screen as the elderly cashier accepted your cash, giving a toothless smile as Davos examined the ingredients listed on junk food packets.

“C’mon,” you mumbled to him, your own bag of breakfast foods would suffice for the two of you.

With the crappy resolution of the blaring TV screen, you almost didn’t recognise what was on the news. The gas station owner didn’t seem to notice as snatched up your change abruptly, your whole body tensing at the still being shown on the news. You tugged Davos viciously by his suspiciously-bloody sleeve, hoping the blaring red-flag of his prison-orange trousers had gone unnoticed by the old man.

_Fuck._

You didn’t say a word to Davos as you climbed into the driver’s seat, taking off as fast as you could. Once the dilapidated sign advertising gas prices was far in the distance, you did your belt up, panic rising in your chest.

“Your mugshot. It was on the news.”

“That’s not an ideal outcome,” Davos conceded as you broke the speed limit, tapping the steering wheel in agitation.

You caught his disapproving look as you pressed your foot shakily on the gas pedal, desperate to put some distance between that gas station and the very convict being displayed on its ancient TV screen.

Would the owner have recognised Davos, as he turned back to the drone of the news, waiting another few hours for his next customers? Would he call it in?

Could he have looked any more suspicious?

“We should get you out of your fucking prison clothes,” you grumbled, “sort that cut, too. It’s probably infected by now. _God_.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not,” you snapped, “you shouldn’t have let me sleep so long!”

Your neck ached from the position you’d slept, your body screaming to get out of the car and stretch, but the adrenaline in your veins made all that easy to forget. There was only one instinct overriding everything else: _run._

“If we are caught, I will ensure you take no blame.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” you snapped.

You regretted your sharp tone as he slunk back into his seat, his eyes on the road and his mouth set in a serious line. The stress, the strangeness, of everything that had happened was setting in once again. You knew you were being grumpy with him.

Part of you thought he probably deserved it.

As the miles ticked on, he gave you no respite from your guilt, the panic swelling inside you. He watched wordlessly as you drove, unresponsive to your desperate attempts to find a radio station which wouldn’t piss you off.

Eventually you found a clear stretch of highway, and put on a playlist from your phone. Davos didn’t react. The music didn’t bring you any joy, as you tried to tap along on the steering wheel, you were left fearing that your phone was somehow being traced.

You turned on airplane mode.

There were still no cars around, the early morning light still weak and the occasional truckers you passed paying no attention to a single, inconspicuous 4x4.

As the song changed you found yourself skipping aimlessly, looking for a familiar album which might alleviate your unsettled mood, irritated by how much _nothing worked_.

Finally you turned the phone entirely off.

As the music cut out abruptly you were left once again with your own thoughts. You craned your neck to watch a hawk hovering above the highway while the sun grew stronger overhead.

The tyres made a monotonous grumbling sound as they passed over tarmac. You stuck religiously to the speed limit in a bid to avoid being pulled over, and to try and keep the fuel indicator on full as long as you could. Every time you chanced a look at Davos, he seemed glassy-eyed, in some meditative half-asleep state. It was freaking you out.

As the miles passed he didn’t move, and you wondered if he was truly asleep. Or if he was sulking. Did he sulk?

Your problem was solved as you hit unexpected traffic outside of Nashville and you slammed on the brakes, one hand reaching out to try and steady Davos as he jolted awake. The seatbelt caught him, and he startled awake at the sudden dig of the fabric into his shoulder.

“Sorry,” you muttered, withdrawing your hand from his chest and clutching the wheel. “I didn’t even realise we were near a city.”

With the roughness of an unused morning-voice, Davos mumbled for you not to worry about it. Then he fidgeted in his seat, stretching as he looked around. A quick glance at the clock revealed what you’d been worried about: rush hour.

Perhaps it was stupid to be this close to civilisation. But you couldn’t help the nihilistic feeling that, if the cops were trying to find you, they would have done it by now. At a more sensible speed, you took a second to be shocked at how far you’d travelled.

“You okay?” You asked Davos, and he rolled his neck, shaking his head as if he could rattle away tiredness.

“Fine.”

“You should sleep,” you told him, in a tone you hoped seemed gentle. “Use the back seat. I’ll try not to emergency brake again.”

“I’m okay.”

Guilt from how he reacted when you shouted at him still clenched at your stomach,

The bags under his eyes told a different story. But if there was one thing you knew about Davos, it was that he never allowed himself to be anything less than ‘fine.’

You pretended to take him at his word.

“Any time you need to sleep, let me know.”

“I will,” he told you firmly.

Your stomach grumbled, and you longed for a cup of something hot to drink and a proper meal. But your options were strictly limited to the bottles of water in the trunk, and packs of junk food. You weren’t about to be arrested for the sake of a drive-through.

“Are you hungry?” you asked him.

“A little.”

Traffic had begun to pick up speed around you, and you peered ahead to try and spot the exit every other car seemed to be queuing for. Finally, you could manoeuvre around the line of bumper-to-bumper traffic, and you tried to find a way into the correct lane as Davos’ brow furrowed in thought. Or concern. It was hard to tell with him, sometimes.

“We have your junk food, I believe,” he finally declared.

“Yup,” you sighed.

You regretted that you couldn’t risk a diner. Proper food. But it wasn’t worth it with a now-televised fugitive in the car.

As you cleared the turnoff for the city, you were once again on open highway. Now surrounded by cars, the driving was a little more taxing, and Davos was constantly scanning the road. Looking for threats.

“That will suffice.”

“Hm?”

“Your western junk food. I don’t care for it. But I will eat it.”

You should have predicted that. How he had survived in New York so long, you had no idea. He must have missed out on all the best food in the city.

“I think some of it’s veggie,” you offered, “best I can do?”

“As I said, that will be fine.”

In truth you were surprised he was willing to compromise, but needs must. He must have been painfully hungry to break his own rules. Or maybe he just didn’t care anymore

“Didn’t eat many hot dogs, I take it?” you teased, really only aiming to amuse yourself as Davos’ quirked eyebrow was turned your way.

“I had pizza, if that counts.”

You were surprised, and a little impressed.

“Like it?” you asked.

“Oh, no.”

_Typical._

*

It didn’t take long for the scenery to change. Like your route was taking a cross-section, the highway had made its way through the city centre of skyscrapers, tower blocks, then suburbs. Fast enough to give you whiplash, the grey of building faded and relentless greenery had returned around you, and the cars thinned until it was rare to see more than a couple of vehicles sharing the road at a time.

As soon as you asked him, Davos obliged you in clambering into the back seat, and rummaging through the trunk, his body slung inelegantly over the backseats.

You were right, you mused, watching him in the rear-view with amusement. Starving.

“Clothes,” he announced suddenly, as he transferred the contents of yesterday’s shopping bags onto the back seats with a disinterest that told you he had no idea what each item was.

“What?”

“You said to get clothes. To remind you.”

He perched himself in the middle of the backseat, knees apart and elbows rested on them, and waited patiently for your answer.

“Uh, I did. We can see if anything I’ve got fits you?”

“We need to be careful about stopping,” he noted, in some strange agreement.

You regretted your answer as you took in his grimy clothes, trying to do an inventory of the precious little you had left in the trunk of the car. You might have some sleep shirts, maybe? Davos was already squinting at packets of food, reading ingredients as if he might recognise one five-syllabic preservative as superior to others.

Frankly, nothing seemed very appealing to you either.

“I’d kill for a shower.”

With a silent nod, he brushed the rest of the snacks onto the carpet, and curled up with an off-brand packet of something chip-shaped and orange. After a few miserable mouthfuls, that bag found its way onto the floor too.

“I think I’ll sleep, now.”

You weren’t surprised to see him laid out prone and snoring before you even answered. It was amazing how he had settled so quickly with food, and you smiled to yourself at the sight.

With a nudge of the radio volume dial, you let yourself fall into the dull pattern of solo driving.

*

The setting of the sun seemed to wake Davos in a panic, and you were astounded by how tired he must have been to sleep for so long with the noise of the radio and the bright light of day.

He sat up with a groan, immediately rushing to stare out the window, making you nervous for his lack of a seat belt as the speedometer sat around seventy-five miles an hour.

The highway had busied and quietened down again in the time Davos had been resting, and you reached to turn on the headlights as he climbed back into the front seat.

You both _really_ needed showers.

In the spirit of rebuilding friendships, you avoided making a ‘sweat-stains’ joke.

“I didn’t know there were parts of America this unpopulated,” he mused, and you nodded in silent agreement.

“It’s amazing. Although, we have been seeking out the quiet.”

He nodded sagely.

“I like it.”

“I’m just surprised no-one’s hunting you down yet.”

“We should rest tonight,” he muttered, looking around suddenly, and you could almost imagine the whine of sirens appearing on the flat road behind you.

No.

You were alone.

“If you think it’s safe?” you conceded.

In truth you were exhausted, and sleep without the threat of being liable for being caught seemed nice. _All Davos’ idea_ , _Officer_ you could protest.

Not that you could ever hand him over.

You agreed to find somewhere on the side of the road to stop and get some sleep.


	3. Rest Stops

You hadn’t planned on letting him behind the wheel of your Chevvy a second time, but Davos made that choice for you. After you’d pulled into a layby to sleep, you awoke to the rumble of tarmac beneath wheels. After a second of confused drowsiness you sat up in the passenger seat to protest, furious he’d just _taken_ the keys from your clenched hand, _moved you_ to the other side of the car, and continued on this endless drive without your permission. Yelling followed sheer, silent shock, as you fumbled for your seatbelt.

“What in the _hell –_ ”

He’d stopped your yelling at him with a single hand, fingers splayed firmly against your clavicle, pushing you back from him as his eyes barely drifted from the road. The touch had made you gulp and sag back into your chair immediately. You accepted it. For the few moments before you fell asleep again you watched his strong profile, lit by increasingly-sparse streetlight as civilisation grew further and further away. Even as he’d pushed you back, his eyes never left the road.

Barely hours had passed since you both agreed to nap.

“We were stationary for too long,” he grunted. “And you needed to sleep.”

Even after so much time apart you could read between those lines.

He’d gotten nervous. Twitchy. Except Davos denied himself emotions, _weakness_ , so it was some grand battle tactic.

“You can’t just move me like that, without my permission. And this is my car. You can’t just take it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He wasn’t. You didn’t argue with him.

Instead you rested back in your seat and listened to the soft strum of country music Davos seemed to have selected as a worthy listening option. You smiled as he remained seemingly unhearing, not even a pinkie tapping against the tightly-grasped steering wheel, as the tune picked up to a catchy pop-rhythm.

“Anything on the news?”

You dreaded to ask. _Anything about us? Davos knew what you meant._

“Nothing of much interest. No mention of our names.”

For a beat the pair of you just sat in silent. You could feel a tightness in your throat, discomfort in your body as you longed for a stretch and a shower.

The tarmac under the tires felt like a physical kind of tinnitus, how it droned monotonously on and on, drove you crazy. You were half convinced you’d continue hearing the whine long after this journey ended. If it ever ended.

“Why?” You exclaimed suddenly.

You startling even yourself with the desperation in your voice.

He glanced at you with a muted surprise, something bordering on amusement at your apparent hysteria.

“Why wouldn’t they be hunting for us. They had us on the news, they just… stopped. It doesn’t make sense. They can track plates and… phones… _why?_ ”

“Perhaps we’re not worth chasing.”

“Hm.”

He seemed non-committal to the idea, already back to facing the road as you fretted in the passenger seat. It felt inevitable, somehow, that you would be caught. That this bizarre cat and mouse game, pursued by invisible law enforcement, would be ended and you bubble would be burst.

Your heart raced if you thought about it too long, and Davos shot you a look of concern.

In a bid to distract yourself, you finally did what you had been avoiding for hours.

You pulled out your phone from the centre console, switching it on before you could talk yourself out of the idea. The lights outside suddenly paled in comparison to the bright, painful light of the screen, and you quickly turned the screen away from Davos – eager not to distract him while he was driving. You still found him sat behind the wheel of a car, obeying road signs and listening to the radio, completely _strange_.

As the screen lit up and message alerts came in, you glanced over to see the deepening furrow in Davos’ brow. It was as if he could sense the familiar name which now sat proudly at the top of your texts. You tilted the screen away from him further, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

 _Colleen_ , your phone told you. Colleen had sent you a text, after her scathing remarks and demands to never speak to you again.

You tried to appear unaffected as you opened the message, trusting that Davos wouldn’t look.

With trembling fingers you tapped the message open, and frowned when you were greeted with a surprisingly curt text. Sent a day ago, it was a single phone number, and a name: “Danny.”

It was hard not to react, not to glance at the man in question’s stoic, fugitive brother as you drove. You couln’t help but wonder: did Danny know?

A shiver rose through you at the thought that maybe the police weren’t looking for Davos because Danny _was_. You didn’t know much about what had happened, but you felt sure that another fight between them would end in nothing less than a blood bath. And, as much as you hated to admit it, Davos didn’t look in the best shape. He couldn’t stand up to the Iron Fist. No one could.

The vision of Davos injured after his fight with Danny for the Fist in K’un-Lun was still fresh in your mind, and with it came a rush of fear. You’d feared he’d die, even if the rest of the city seemed unbothered by the risk of internal bleeding or horrific head injuries.

With a frown you returned to deciphering Collen’s message, trying to unpick what she’d meant, why she’d given you Danny number.

Then you noticed another text.

The number matched the one Colleen had sent you, you realised, seeing them one above the other in your inbox. She’d told Danny that you’d been looking for his brother.

He would hate you too.

You opened the message slowly, half-expecting a vitriolic paragraph or a threat to turn Davos over to the police. Instead, it was short. A single question. Each word made your heart sink more than the last.

“ _Is he safe?_ ”

God.

You turned the phone over, taking a deep breath and blinking at the passing darkness outside as you absorbed Danny’s message.

_Is he safe?_

It was all you could do to shoot back a quick ‘ _yes’_ , and ignore the sheer devastation which seeped into your bones at the thought of Danny typing out that message.

“What’s that?”

You were thankful for Davos’ intense concentration whilst driving, because his eyes never flickered from the road as you absorbed the messages.

“Nothing.”

Your phone buzzed again in your hand, and you forced yourself to wait until Davos was distracted by the road to open it.

_“I told them he’s left the country.”_

Brusque. Surprisingly so. Especially from Danny, he’d always been the chatty type. But as the pieces suddenly clicked together, and you breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe he was saying far more than you realised.

A sincere ‘ _Thank you_ ’ sat typed out on your phone screen, but as the seconds passed you became more and more wary of sending it. You could already see these texts projected in a court room, on police paperwork. You deleted the message.

You curled up, prepared to go to sleep, watching as Davos tapped out an inconsistent rhythm against the steering wheel. You didn’t tell him about the messages, you couldn’t, but you knew this changed everything. Danny had lied to the authorities. Colleen had probably helped. It seemed that Davos wasn’t being actively hunted – though you had no doubt he would be arrested should anyone recognise him. And now… what?

It was a question for tomorrow, you decided, as you opted against replying to Danny’s message and instead simply switched your phone off. You could take your victories as they came, and this was certainly something good. Even though you trusted Davos not to snoop, you slid the phone beneath your legs, curling around it protectively.

At least until the sun came up, you could bask in this relative safety.

The rumble of tarmac and the quiet tapping of Davos’ fingers on the steering wheel became amplified as you closed your eyes and rest your head on the door, surprised once again by how comfortable you felt letting down your guard around Davos despite everything he’d done. He seemed larger than life, often, a regular man who commanded more fear and respect than someone a foot faller. Yet sat beside you in the car, his presence just felt _comforting_.

An image of the three of you wandering the mountains surrounding the village was wrought somewhere from your memory. You, Danny, and Davos. It was cold, a thin layer of melting snow crunching between your boots, the rest of the world _down_ for as far as you could see from the ridge you trapsed across. Danny had been bouncing on his heels, excited and jumping in front of your lens as you explored with a camera in hand. It was always odd to you; the way Danny seemed a markedly different person outside the walls of the monastery. A gentler contrast, Davos had been beside you the whole journey, keeping to your pace, his feet falling to the ground in a quiet, metered crunch as his adoptive brother took a more chaotic route.

You’d taken a photo of them stood together up there, feeling as though you were sharing the top of the world, giddy with the thinness of the air which felt as though it crushed your lungs if you inhaled too deeply.

Through the viewfinder of your camera you’d allowed yourself to laugh at their dynamic: Davos’ relaxed stance and Danny’s cheesy grin down the lens, one arm slung around his brother even as Davos was unaffected by the camera focussed on him.

As soon as the click of the shutter went off, Danny had bounded towards you.

“Lets see!” Danny had demanded, holding a hand out for your camera as Davos looked on curiously.

“It’s not digital,” you’d explained patiently. “The film needs to be developed.”

Danny had thrown his head back like a stroppy toddler, his dramatic groan making you giggle as it echoed around the mountains. Davos had given him a curious raised eyebrow, as you undid your thick winter coat to retrieve something from the inside pocket.

You’d brought one digital camera on your trip, the batteries saved for special occasions, and now felt like the right time to use it.

You and Danny had crowded the frame, jostling to try and get Davos in the background, laughing too hard to take a good picture. The photos had come out full of weird faces, blurry and messy, and they were some of your favourites from the trip. Danny had stared at them in awe on your tiny viewfinder as you shuddered from the cold, eventually taking the camera off him so you could zip your coat back up at Davos’ insistence.

On the walk back to where you’d been staying, Davos had seen the distinctive tracks of a snow leopard, silencing you and Danny’s laughter with a single raised hand.

You could still hear his voice now, melding into your dreams as you fought the jostling of the Chevvy to try and sleep:

“ _Tread carefully._ ”

*

As the morning sun rose, you once again lamented your severe lack of sleep.

 _Where would I be now_ , you wondered, _if I hadn’t stopped to have a cry in my car at the prison?_

Better fed, and less exhausted. That was for sure.

“This has to be the most stressful few days of my life,” you grumbled, reaching for one of the warm water bottles scattered around the car to wet your sleep-dry mouth.

Davos gave a grunt, and you sensed amusement from him as you choked down water. This was a chilled-out experience by his standards, you realised glumly.

Completely unaware of your aching sadness for him, Davos was watching you with concern.

“Good morning to you too,” he greeted.

“‘Morning.”

As you watched wordlessly as the road signs pass. It only took a few minutes to spot what you wanted: the turn off for a service station. Davos gave an aggravated huff as you flipped the indicator for him, desperate for a chance to alleviate the pressure on your bladder.

He followed the indication despite your early-morning grumpiness, slamming on the brakes to take the turnoff, and you watched his movements.

He looked at you in question, and you shrugged.

“I really need to pee,” you admitted.

*

At the service station you scraped together enough change for coffee and a couple of meagre breakfasts, instructing Davos to pull into a distant corner of the parking lot, hoping no one was watching the security cameras at this ridiculously early hour.

 _Why would they be?_ You had to remind yourself. _Just act normal_.

The rest stop was near deserted, but you kept your head down anyway.

After washing your face and using the facilities, you felt infinitely better, and Davos smiled at the spring in your step as you approached the car with food and a hot drink in hand.

“Better?” He asked as you stood outside his window, enjoying the stretch in your legs after so long sitting down. You even though you could hear a tint of teasing in his voice, and it only brightened your mood.

“So much better,” you groaned, handing over a rustling bag of food which Davos quickly examined.

You had already started on your own breakfast, silencing your grumbling stomach.

For a second, as the two of you gratefully choked down your food, it almost felt like a normal road trip.

“So what do you make of that?” you teased.

Davos just gave you a look of sincere confusion, pausing mid-mouthful to furrow his brows at your question. You caught yourself stumbling to explain yourself, face hot with embarrassment as your joke fell flat.

“I just meant… It’s not exactly… what we ate in K’un-Lun,” you explained.

He huffed a laugh between chews, making you roll your eyes, secretly relieved he wasn’t upset.

“I suppose you’ve been here long enough to adapt.”

Finally Davos broke his silence. You always loved it when you could wring a few words out of him.

“I wouldn’t say I’ve adapted. Settled, perhaps, for this junk.”

“Better than prison food?”

“Infinitely.”

As you finished eating, Davos stared down another perfectly innocent driver who had pulled into the parking lot for a bathroom break or some equally trashy food. The lot was surrounded by woodland, and Davos seemed in his element as he excused himself to the woods.

It was probably for the best. He would stand out like a sore thumb to the gas station workers. You took the opportunity to change into something fresh, grateful for the lack of interruptions. The two of you were filthy, the last few days peppered with apologies to one another for smelling of sweat. A fresh change of clothes was heavenly, and you rummaged through your bags for a shirt and pants which might fit Davos. He would certainly be glad for the same luxury.

And the chance to get that bright-orange reminder of the NYC prison system off him.

His light footsteps warned you of his approach as you finally found an oversized shirt and pulled it free from your bag. Pants would be a bit trickier – thrift stores, perhaps? Any change of clothes would likely be an improvement.

“I have a shirt?” you called to him.

Davos rounded the car, his undershirt fabric already bunched in his hands, and you tried to look away as he stripped off. He had no shame about nudity, never had, but you were left flustered standing at the trunk of your own car. You tried to avert your eyes, but you’d never been much good at resisting the draw of his body.

As he turned you gasped, suddenly forgetting to even _pretend_ you weren’t staring.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Davos demanded, still shirtless as he followed your eyeline, trying to spot something behind him.

“Your back!”

“Oh.”

“I didn’t see you as the tattoo type,” you stood from the car, walking behind him, allowing yourself to run your fingers down the snake as it wound its way down his spine.

He didn’t flinch away, letting you be nosy, letting you touch him.

“It’s nice. I like it,” you added.

“It was not a vanity project,” he said dryly.

From his tone, the stiffness of his muscles, he was resisting the urge to snap. _Just when you’d started to have fun_ , you thought glumly. In one swift motion he pulled the shirt on, forcing you to step away and withdraw your hand.

“Why’d you get it?”

No reply. But from the slump in Davos’ shoulders, the pieces clicked into place.

Danny’s tattoo had been a huge point of pride, the power in imbued in him, and you remembered an evening in K’un-Lun where he’d proudly showed you, a black dragon fresh with leaking ink, framed by still-pink skin. Davos had never been able to look at it, averting his eyes when Danny showed it off.

Now that he had his own, its majestic form hidden away on his back, you wondered if he avoided looking at it in the mirror.

You knew you should resent the ink, the grab for power it symbolised, but in some ways, Davos had deserved it all along. If he looked inwards enough, you felt sure even Danny knew that.

The artful lines sketched across Davos’ skin didn’t make you angry at him, or scared. All you could see in them was desperation, and loss. You wondered how he’d felt as he got it. As he’d grit his teeth through the pain and felt as though he fulfilled his birth right. He had probably been thinking of his mother.

Davos had turned, watching you for a reaction and hiding his clothed back from your sight. You were left with the sight of his chest, muscular and proud, the fabric of your shirt stretching across it.

You swallowed, wondering how much tact would be required to ever discuss this with Davos at length.

“Must have been painful.”

You comment was innocent on the surface. You hoped Davos caught your meaning.

He grunted a “yes”, before rummaging through the trunk for more food.

 _So much for that conversation_ , you thought begrudgingly for yourself.

At least the shirt fit, with a pair of your sweatpants managing to cling around his hips. Before you had even fully stretched out your aching muscles found yourself rushed to get behind the wheel once again, pulling out of the parking lot, accompanied by a sleeping Davos in the back seat.

He’d been exhausted, jumping at your offer to sleep while you drove, and you couldn’t help marvelling at how long he’d stayed awake. His whisper-quiet snores kept you company as you drove, his dead sleep rather impressive in a moving car.

Your fight to focus on the road ahead was embarrassingly hard won, as your mind drifted over and over again to the ink painted across Davos’ back.

*

Something had been bothering you ever since you’d first heard Davos on the phone from prison. You’d assumed his muted-ness, his strange nervousness, was a product of the environment he was in. But even now, the Davos you’d known hadn’t returned full force. Did he not trust you anymore?

Was he just… a different man to the one you’d known in K’un-Lun?

That was what you feared, deep down. That he was simply an irreparably different person. That Colleen’s warnings had been right. That you couldn’t trust him anymore.

He had woken up after just a few hours, and you gladly took the chance to swap place with him, laying in the puddle of body heat he’d left on the back seat of the Chevvy and entirely failing to doze off.

Instead you lay still, watching his profile sideways as he changed lanes, navigating heavier traffic for the first time. He was trying to drive gently, accelerating slowly and breaking even slower in order to to let you rest. You were begrudgingly forced to admit that – for a man who grew up in a rural mountain city – he was a remarkably adept driver.

If a little defensive.

That was to be expected, you supposed.

Even more impressive than Davos’ driving was the fact he was doing it whilst keeping a watchful eye on you. Like a parent with a misbehaving child, he kept glancing down in the rear-view.

Perhaps he was convinced you would lunge for the door handle, try and escape out onto the speeding highway. Certainly, he had to know you wouldn’t. But this overprotectiveness and mistrust seemed like yet another thing which seemed _off_ about Davos.

Back in K’un-Lun he had been trusting to the point of naivete, even to you, once he had overcome his initial suspicion towards a foreigner in his home. He had trusted his mother, his father, Danny, the customs he grew up with. Even when they hurt him, he never failed to trust again and again.

So why was he watching you like a hawk, half-convinced you were about to stab him in the back or run for the hills? There was something up, you knew it. And yet, for the past few days on the run, you had chosen to ignore it.

You could try and pretend no time had passed and he was the same man. You almost dreaded the truth, the thing you had suspected this whole time: that he was simply _not okay._

Would he explode if you asked? Without lifting your head from the bunched up sweater you were using as a pillow, you summoned the courage to try poking the tiger.

“You don’t seem yourself.”

Silence.

Then, after Davos had merged lanes, and sped up:

“I don’t feel myself.”

Another beat of silence, and the echo of his voice inside your head.

“I don’t either, if that helps.”

It was all you could offer, a tiny condolence, and a weak one at that. You immediately regretted your words, loathing to make it all about you. Still, what else could you say? You had no idea what he had been through, no comparison points from your own life. But the little he had told you was heart-breaking.

“I’m sorry,” Davos mumbled.

Immediately you sat up, blinking at the bright light of outside as you reached forwards for his shoulder. He tensed up, and you withdrew your hand.

“God no, I didn’t mean… it’s not your fault.”

“It is. And I am truly sorry.”

His sincerity was humbling, as usual.

“This is temporary,” you reassured him. “They’re not looking for us. Besides, we’ll run out of America eventually.”

“I have no plans beyond that either.”

You let silence weigh heavy on the both of you, uncomfortable and constricting. For once your mouth wasn’t dry, your tongue didn’t taste foul from being unable to brush your teeth. Yet even with enough sleep and food in your stomach, you felt a physical nausea, the beginnings of a stress headache brewing behind your eyes.

Now, Davos being such a control freak suited you. You felt too uneasy to drive.

“What was your plan in New York?” you asked softly.

He remained stoic, not even a shrug, but he answered without missing a beat.

“To rid the city of the evil which consumed it.”

You blinked in surprise.

“But I mean like… where were you going to live? What were you going to do?”

 _Real life stuff,_ you wanted to ask. _Kids and a wife? GoFundMe campaign to start a new fighting school? Retrain as a nail technician? What was the plan, Davos?_

“I had none.”

“Just… ‘purge evil’ _?_ ” You tried not to sound disbelieving, but you suspected it didn’t work.

“Yes.”

Simple. Of course it was. _That_ was a complete plan in Davos’ mind. But it gave you nothing to extrapolate from, no bucket list or attainable career aspiration you could plan for in future. Sometimes you cursed him for being so plainly ambitious, directly driven. He was never one for a ‘Plan B’.

Ever the king of uncomfortable, prolonged silences, Davos said nothing more.

“Even when you had the Fist, did you not want anything _else_?”

“Nothing.”

“Not when you were locked up? No _exciting new perspective on life_?”

You regretted your jovial tone instantly. That nerve was still exposed, raw, tender. Suddenly his entire body was tensed, the flexing of his muscles making you instinctively recoil from him a little. You suddenly felt as though you were in a career guidance session with a _bomb_.

“I wanted to die, when they took the Iron Fist from me. _Begged_ for it. I thought they’d leave me to rot in that cage of evil for the rest of my life,” he spat.

Your heart sank.

 _Right_. So that was what he’d been thinking about. You were coldly reminded that you had almost no idea what he’d been through. What he’d done.

Would you even side with him so strongly if you knew?

Nonetheless, you cautiously trusted him. He couldn’t be so different from the man you’d known in K’un-Lun – the protector who would sacrifice himself for any innocent bystander on the street.

Perhaps his methods were harsh, at times. But that was where he came from, all he knew.

He just wasn’t built for this world.

As usual his anger cooled quickly, unacknowledged and unsatisfied, as he’d been trained.

“Can I ask you something stupid?” You asked tentatively.

He nodded sagely, as though you had no reason to fear any of the million conversation topics you wanted to broach.

“Why didn’t you escape before? You were obviously capable of it.”

“From prison?”

You nodded, fumbling for a water bottle to distract yourself.

“Where could I go? I had nothing left to fight for,” he told you, his words heavy.

You dropped your chin, staring down at your hands. Silence reigned for another second.

“What was the power like?” You whispered, “How did it feel?”

You asked the question timidly, but truly you had wanted to know for as long as you’d known about the Fist. Danny had been frustratingly vague, smug, once the power was imbued in him. You suspected it was to wind his brother up, that he’d never given you the description you wanted to hear.

Davos inhaled deeply, as if he was breathing fresh mountain air, remembering the feeling of the Fist.

“It was… everything I wanted. I felt new. Better. Complete. A stronger man. All those years of slowly building my punches, going through the pain of training, breaking my knuckles over and over until they were strong, and suddenly I was more powerful than I could ever dream of. And I _deserved it_. Or… it felt like it did. I felt whole.”

You let the words hang heavy, the unspoken swirling around on the air flows of the car AC.

He _felt_ whole.

Past tense.

He continued speaking as if he’d forgotten you were there, the same wistful tone as when he’d told you parables and ancient stories in K’un-Lun. It was harder to lie back and relax, to let his voice wash over you, when you knew he was talking about his own actions.

“There were street boys in New York. I trained them, saved them,” Davos mumbled, “or tried to.”

His jaw clenched as he spoke, and yet you couldn’t see true anger. Instead, there as an emotion he was taught to fear, to avoid. _Sadness._

“What happened?”

“They were taken too. Arrested, or _killed._ I could never be like my father, I couldn’t train them. Even the Hand taught better than me.”

“What do you mean?” You asked carefully.

“There was an academy in New York. They… trained them. Poisoned their fighters’ minds. Took young people and turned them into soldiers for the Hand.”

You’d been told about the Hand. You had always assumed it to be something abstract, like evil itself, the _darkness_ you had heard people describe. Intangible. A manifestation of what you recognised as sin. It was startling to hear of The Hand as _real_ , not something out of a story. Just as it was startling to see Davos outside of K’un-Lun, you supposed.

Like a badly-done photoshop job, the idea of the Hand being real, a part of _real, actual New York_... It didn’t seem right somehow. You couldn’t imagine it.

 _Small world_ , you could hear Danny saying.

It was a fight to keep your focus on the road and away from his face as you reeled from finally hearing what Davos had to say. The urge to run from him boiled up in your chest as Davos gripped the steering wheel harder, his nails carving crescents into the faux-leather.

“Like you trained those boys?”

Tendons in his neck bulged slightly, and you feared the safety of your car as his forearms tensed. For a moment, you wondered if he would burst a blood vessel, or hiss at you in frustration, swerve across the lanes. The anger just stayed there, holding his body hostage.

After a split-second, his fury was gone. Schooled back into place. Pushed down into the box he trapped it in.

“I am nothing like those agents of the Hand.”

You could sense the end of a conversation when it came, and fear for your own safety overtook curiosity. Not that you thought Davos would hurt you on purpose, of course. But the speedometer ticked higher and higher with every uncomfortable question.

As a point of pride, of trust, you refused to be scared of Davos. It was impossible to admit to yourself that he might, truly, be the dangerous man you’d been warned about. He had never scared you in K’un-Lun – merely amused you with overprotectiveness, and endeared you with how his true good intent was masked behind an awkward bluntness which failed to warm almost anyone to him at first.

 _A Labrador in an Alsatian’s body,_ you’d joked with Danny.

Davos hadn’t understood, but you’d reassured him it was a good thing.

You wondered if Danny had thought differently back then. Suspected Davos had a darker nature. He certainly hadn’t said anything if he had, treating Davos a little like a younger brother, winding him up for your shared amusement. Davos had always seemed begrudgingly happy to be part of the joke.

You fought down the urge to apologise to him as the road flew by uncomfortably fast.

Slowly, his temper cooled, and the car slowed. You let go of the seatbelt, unaware you had even been clutching it. You refused to be afraid of the man in front of you, as he squinted at the passing road signs and demanded to know the nature of ‘Indianapolis’.

“Too populated,” you told him gently, “let’s move on.”

He nodded, and you drifted off.

*

The sun rose and fell in the sky as you dozed, and by late afternoon you had stopped for another rest stop, gotten food, and resumed your journey sat up front in the passenger seat. As long as Davos insisted upon driving you would let him. No grudges seemed to be held from your conversation that morning, apparently.

You sat up to rest your head against the window, and Davos tilted the steering wheel to breeze past a queue traffic headed for a nearby city. The calm was unsettling, somehow. It made you nervous to close your eyes.

The conversation was still so heavy in your mind it made your shoulders ache, leaving you too buzzed to relax in the early evening sun. On instinct, you unlocked your phone, wincing at the tiny amount of charge it had left and vowing to plug it into the car tomorrow.

Or whenever you next woke.

Was it already tomorrow?

You watched disinterestedly as the screen lit up with messages, knowing better than to reply to anyone the police might be in contact with. Only one name finally caught your eye, making your phone buzz as the lights of yet another copy-pasted town faded into the rear-view.

Danny had sent you one more text, after you’d assumed your conversation to be over.

_“Keep him far away from people. Be careful.”_

You tossed the phone into the footwell in disgust.

As you went to switch on the radio, desperate for something engaging to listen to for yet another day of endless driving, Davos’ hand gently stopped you. It was jarring, when you felt so far from the man beside you, to have him close enough to touch.

His skin was warm, and as you withdrew your hand from the radio you looked over to see something close to true pain on his face.

It made your heart clench in sympathy.

“I was wrong to get them involved,” he told you, his voice low and filled with disgust at his own actions, “the kids.”

You’d assumed he’d already moved on from the hours-old conversation, his focus drawn away and his conviction in his own actions as strong as ever. Now you could see you were wrong. He was still mulling over everything which had happened, everything he’d said.

Maybe he had been this whole time. It would explain his distance.

“I wasn’t strong enough to be their Shifu. I barely trusted what I was doing myself. I should not have wasted their lives by drawing them into my tutelage.”

You nodded quietly, unsure what to say. The car was so silent, the air so conductive with tension, you thought he could probably hear your uneasy _gulp_.

After a moment of silent acknowledgement, Davos turned up the radio volume himself.

You were too shocked to change it from the fuzzy ‘ _immoral garbage’_ he hated, which was playing through a half-tuned pop station. Davos was already back to staring at the tarmac ahead. 

*

When Davos began to yawn, you knew it was time to sleep. You had swapped seats and taken over driving for a few hours, but it would be too dangerous to continue through the dark night for much longer. You own eyelids were drooping with exhaustion, each blink becoming longer to avoid the harsh headlights ahead.

Even with the car’s heating there was a distinct chill in the air, making you shiver in your seat as Davos fought to keep his eyes open.

For the first time, both of you needed sleep and felt you deserved it. A day of driving, a day of snacking, and meaningless chatter, and singing along to the radio while Davos gave you amused smirks, and you were still no closer to knowing what would happen when this bizarre road trip ended.

Or when it would end.

How would you know it was safe?

For the first time, there seemed like a way out which wasn’t prison. You rolled your neck and stretched out your back as you evaluated your options, two fingers resting on the steering wheel. You knew a few things. Davos wasn’t being hunted, for one. Even if he was caught, you might not be implicated in his escape. You might be able to just…. Disappear. You could relax for one night, after days of agonizing driving.

The man beside you seemed to realise it too, and exhaustion finally started to show on his face in gaunt shadows and slow blinks, as he let down his guard ever so slightly. The finger-shaped indents on your steering wheel told you just how much he had been through today – you feared he would permanently damage it with his misdirected tension. When you first took the steering wheel you had ghosted your fingers over them, let your hands settle where his had been, impressed in some strange way by the dents he had left.

“We should find a layby,” you told him quietly, the sunset ending in a glorious rays of orange, filtering through the tall forest which bracketed the highway.

You were rural here, passing an occasional house nestled in the mountainous terrain, but nothing more menacing than that. There were occasional spots to pull over and sleep for the night, some shielded thinly from the road by trees or maintenance buildings. Every instinct in your body would usually scream against stopping, being vulnerable to highway killers and all kinds of imagined beasts lurking in the woods.

But with Davos, you knew you were safe.

Your sunglasses were perched on his nose, borrowed while you squinted against the last light of an orange sunset. You’d insisted he wore the glasses, and he’d only denied you use of them begrudgingly, at your insistence. The sight of him with wide cat-eye frames more than made up for your aching eyes. You had to fight back a giggle at the sight of him wearing them each time you looked across the car.

“How about there?” You suggested, spotting a turn off for a long-abandoned campsite, the advertising sign flaking with paint and cracked.

Once again, you were grateful you weren’t on your own. It was horror film material. But beside Davos, it would be fine.

 _He’s the scariest thing out here_ , the seed of doubt inside of you offered.

“As good as anywhere,” he conceded.

You took the turn quickly.

There was no one else around, but you caught yourself scanning the road for cop cars nonetheless. It was instinct now.

A quiet rhythm was established once you stopped, silently taking it in turns to wander into the woods undisturbed. You deeply missed a locking bathroom door. You’d both chosen to stand around to eat, stretching your legs, picking through the food in the trunk of the Chevvy.

Ah, dinner.

Dinner had been underwhelming. Just stuff you had left from previous meals. You should still be driving, you knew. Your mental plan had been to get more drive-through when you were another hundred miles down the road, but that wouldn’t fly. Davos had barely eaten since breakfast, insisting you had first pick of the food, and hating everything anyway for its _impurity_. Barely fed, you’d both sat above the back bumper of the Chevvy suddenly overcome with tiredness.

“I’ll drive on. You sleep.”

He’d held his hand out for the car keys, and you declined to give them to him. You didn’t even have them. They were in the ignition, ready at the first sign of trouble.

“No. They’ll definitely catch us if we wreck the car…” you’d mumbled sleepily.

For a moment he seemed ready to fight.

“Plus you’re exhausted,” you tacked on, eyes resting closed.

Davos didn’t even try to convince you he could drive. His own eyes were bloodshot, face sullen, and you knew you were as bad. Exhausted. On the verge of giving up.

The sun had gone down while you ate, making the abandoned parking lot infinitely creepier than when you first arrived. But unsafe or not, it was better than driving on. 

“A fair argument.”

He got out of the trunk unexpectedly, throwing himself into the backseat and slamming the door closed. You took a moment for take stock of what little you had left in the trunk, to tidy a bit, before you clambered out yourself. You reclined the front seat as far as you could without crushing his legs, and clutched your coat for warmth. It was almost completely dark, he’d shut off the lights inside the car, and you struggled to get comfortable as your hip bumped the steering wheel and your body protested the awkward angle.

You wouldn’t deny Davos sleep for you own comfort, no matter how quickly sleep was now evading you. You tried to fight through the ache in your back silently, begging your body to get some rest. Though you were a little jealous of his dibs on the bench seat, you wouldn’t argue. He needed it.

It was getting to him, the feeling of being chased like this, like a deer hunted for sport. You knew he must think of you as incompetent company, resent your lack of discipline, your uncontrolled mind, your need for _sleep_ and _junk food_ , the readiness with which you succumbed to the basics of life, how you needed reassurance, wouldn’t let him drive too late, wouldn’t just push through your fear, how you’d –

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

His voice broke you from your panic, and you realised you had gone strangely still, struggling for air as panic overtook you.

“Hm?”

With a glance in the rear-view mirror you could see his face, sideways as he assumed a position to sleep, meeting his reflection looking at you with a concerned frown.

“I was worried about you,” he added.

Oh.

“Thanks..?”

He nodded.

“You’re the only person from this world to show me kindness.”

His sincerity was scary.

Sometimes he was made of stone, sometimes he bared his feelings like it was the most natural thing in the world. The flip-flopping was jarring enough to make your own mask slip.

“That’s not true –” You began.

As he exhaled a heavy sigh, you realised you had no way of knowing that. Not really.

You diverted the conversation instead, for all the good it would do.

“Danny text me earlier. He wanted to check you’re okay, said our faces weren’t on the news anymore –”

You weren’t quite sure why you hid the full truth from him – how instrumental Danny had been, how he was drawing fire in violation of the moral code of their upbringing – but something told you it was the right thing to do.

Your gut said to hold onto that piece of information a little longer. To hold your cards close to your chest. As Davos spat his reply, you felt sure you had made the right call.

“A tiny offering, made from guilt,” he declared. “Danny only showed me kindness when his world was too small to have other friends. Other _family_.”

You gulped, feeling tears prick at your overtired eyes.

“He really loved you, in K’un-Lun. He was so proud to be your brother.”

Davos flinched, you could see it even through the moonlit interior of the car. A semi sped past on the road outside, sounding like a freight train for just a split second before its ruckus was quietening into the cricket-chirps and bird calls of the night.

“It doesn’t matter. He betrayed me,” he protested.

Abruptly Davos’ voice became softer, quieter.

“He saw my weakness. Like my parents did. He thought he was _better_. And in the end, he was right.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” you comforted hollowly.

Davos sniffed. You knew he was as overtired as you, as overly emotional, and his words broke your heart.

“He saw I wasn’t worthy of attachment. Of _kindness._ Perhaps he told you the same, since the two of you have been _texting_.”

The absence of bitterness in his voice would have surprised you, had anyone else been speaking. In Davos all you heard was sadness – an emotion he likely didn’t even recognise in himself.

It fell under that repressed umbrella of ‘mental weakness’.

“You deserve it,” you told him earnestly. “Care. Love. Respect. On my trip to K’un-Lun… you were kind to me there. In your world. I can’t believe what they said you did.”

When he didn’t speak, you filled the silence.

“I was outside on the face of a mountain, and you took me in. Not many people would be strong enough to do that. Not when everyone around you said to let me freeze.”

“I can’t imagine if I had let you freeze. My life would be… different.”

 _Better_? you wondered. _Would Davos be better?_

You refused to believe it. If anything, he was short on friends. More love in his life could never be a bad thing.

“I wish I knew,” he began. “what I _did_. What I should have done. They told me in prison, every day, that I was supposed to think about what I’d done. And I meditated, and I tried to think, and I could never understand.”

Prison. You knew it would half-kill him, every day he spent in there.

“I was surrounded by murderers and thieves and rapists… I… I’m not like them. Those were the very people I fought against. And I was imprisoned by the people I was trying to _help_. The good side. Or, at least, I thought –”

“There is no good side.”

Your interruption in his impromptu soliloquy seemed to take him by surprise, and you wondered just how far into a manifesto he might have gotten before he even remembered you were there.

“Explain,” he demanded.

With a deep breath, you leant back into your uncomfortable position, wondering if being able to see his face would make this discussion easier or harder.

_There must be a reason we haven’t talked about this during the day._

“People aren’t good or bad. ‘Infected’ or ‘safe’. Everyone’s…. just trying to do the best they can. Every day. Including you and me.”

He was quiet, and you wondered if he’d fallen asleep. Or simply tuned you out.

“Even when there are bad guys, we don’t just go around fighting. Or we shouldn’t. Certainly, all of New York isn’t _your_ fight,” you continued quietly. “There’s… there’s procedures. Criminals should get second chances. People are shades of grey…”

“I saw no justice on those streets.”

You sighed, rolled your neck, pulling your coat over yourself like a blanket and half wishing you could just go to sleep. But you had to know something else first, as Davos lay still and tense on the backseat.

“Did you really kill people? The papers and Colleen said… you did.”

“I killed those who needed to be dealt with, for the good of the city.”

“Fuck, Davos!”

You couldn’t help yourself, pulling the coat tighter around yourself, rolling away from him. A flash of headlights in the distance made you flinch, wondering if this was the police, the FBI, finally bothering to come and get you. You had trapped yourself in the car with a murderer, sided with him. Yet you never saw that in Davos. He put you on edge sometimes, but you were never _afraid_.

You couldn’t see the evil in him.

“The lack of discipline, the way people _suffer_ , because of the evil pervading those streets…” his voice reached you through the car’s new stillness, the air suddenly fragile, ready to snap.

“Corporal punishment… capital punishment… those aren’t yours to dish out. They’re not any one person’s right to dish out.”

The scars all over his hands told a different story, the lash marks you’d caught glimpses of all over him. He’d never known any different.

Did he even see the gulf of difference between what he’d been doing, and the misplaced ‘love’ his parents had shown him? Not for the first time, you wished you’d been able to do more than spectate in K’un-Lun, that you had shrugged off the protocols of good, non-invasive journalism ethics and intervened. You’d offered friendship to Davos and his brother, and now you wished you’d offered the man beside you something more: guidance, love, _help._

Davos had stopped arguing with you, and when you turned to face him he had cut you off, closed his eyes and gone wherever it was he went when his mind drifted from your company.

Meditating, maybe.

With a sigh, you pulled your coat tighter around yourself. You glanced at his face again, before reaching up to push the mirror away. Suddenly his eyes snapped open.

“When did you leave K’un-Lun?” he asked.

“I don’t know… maybe three months ago?”

“It’s gone now.”

You knew.

You _knew_.

And yet you still couldn’t comprehend it. Refused to believe it.

“Yeah.”

“I was so glad you were okay,” he repeated.

He’d lost everything, and he couldn’t talk about it. His mother, father, home. Then he’d come to New York and lost the Fist, and Danny. You were suddenly overcome with grief for him, shivering.

You wished you could turn the car’s heating on, but you couldn’t risk flattening the battery. You shook with cold instead, trying to summon the strength to get out and find more layers to pull tight around yourself.

Davos noticed how your teeth chattered.

“It’s cold.” He stated.

“I know, strangely enough.”

In the silence, he laughed. Your answering snort of amusement only made him laugh harder.

You’d never understand his sense of humour.

“Come here. You’ll be warmer, with body heat.”

He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even lifted his head, his own coat clutched tightly around him. You froze up.

“That seat looks uncomfortable,” he prompted.

“Yeah…”

There was barely room to climb into the backseat, and you were forced to lie on top of Davos a little to get your legs through the gap. He still hadn’t moved, and you started to feel confused. This couldn’t possibly be what he meant…

“Hold on.”

You held still as he unwrapped his coat from around himself, wrapping the fabric behind you, until you were laying on top of him. His hand guided you down, palm firm against the small of your back, and you hated how it made panic rise up inside of you.

“Davos I’m heavy…”

“You’re warm.”

The hum in his voice made you gasp. The noise he made was dangerously close to a moan as he manoeuvred you over his body. You were surprised by how soft he was beneath you, untensed and pulling you close.

For warmth.

This was survival. Nothing more.

All he wanted was not to freeze. For you not to freeze.

You tried not to breathe too deeply, not to let your body melt into his.

Your sleep came and went easily that night, the pair of you fidgeting between REM cycles, trying to get comfortable in the unfamiliar situation. You woke up warm though, fingers cradled with his between your bodies, hands no longer numb.

*

The grumble of his voice as he greeted you ‘good morning’ sent you packing, climbing away from his chest and preparing for the day with a new jumpiness around him, a completely inappropriate feeling deep in your stomach.

As you drove you could feel his body beneath yours, a phantom sensation of his warmth paradoxically making you want to run from him and cling to him all at once.

You put it down to exhaustion. At least, you did when he asked you about your skittishness.

“I’ll drive. Have a proper sleep,” he insisted, sending you into the back seat.

You weren’t really tired. And besides, the back seat didn’t feel the same without his body beneath you. When you woke up from a half-doze you were at a drive through, Davos shaking you as you reached the beginning of the order queue.

“I don’t know what any of this is,” he grumbled, “help.”

You frowned at him, drowsy from sleep as you scrambled to the passenger seat, leaning over his lap to order. His thighs were thick under your hands as you leant on him for balance. Somewhere deep in your stomach you felt a tightening feeling, imaging how the tired worker behind the glass must have seen you.

 _A sweet couple_.

He let you order, fumbling with cash from the centre console to pay, as you tried to wake from your sleepiness.

He ate the meal you’d ordered him in silence as he drove on, listening to you sing along to the radio.

It was in moments like that, amongst the panic whenever the news played, the frantic rerouting, the crap food and worse sleep, you found yourself enjoying yourself.

And so began a pattern.

The sweet moments at gas stations, laughing at Davos as he tried junk food and lamented what you ate. You gradually wrote off every type of drive-through, letting him try a bite of everything you ate in the hopes he might suddenly take to Veggie Deluxe Big Macs.

No luck, but that was fine. He always indulged you anyway, whining about sour sweets or stealing your fries, even though he insisted he hated this junk-filled Western food.

“That garbage will rot your body,” he had told you earnestly, refusing to hand you candy as you drove.

You had rolled your eyes, reached for the bag beside his thigh anyway with one hand on the wheel.

“We’re wanted fugitives, might as well let our bodies rot.”

Despite his complaints, he let you delight in making him try various foods. He hadn’t liked Skittles, but you had appreciated him trying them for your benefit.

Through all your time in K’un-Lun, between the opening and closing of the pass, you had never seen him like this. Almost dressed down, lost without the discipline and structure of his life.

Certainly you had spent time together back then, diverted him from his routine. You had grown fond of each other as you drifted in and out of his life. He’d guided you, once, on an expedition to take photographs. You had treasured the pictures you had of him, all taken without his knowing, in strong training poses or moments of quiet reflection.

There was still a polaroid of him tucked inside your backpack, part of a stack. Danny was there too, photographed laughing cheekily, between prints showing the beauty of the surrounding mountains. Publication of those pictures seemed like an impossible idea now. Maybe it was selfish, but you could never share them with the rest of the world. 

Davos looked good as he drove, attentive to the road, refusing to take breaks until you insisted. His jaw would tense as he took in your instructions, or saw another irresponsible driver, and you would watch from the passenger seat.

“You might be the master of your own body, but I got a large drink a hundred miles ago, so…” you had taunted him once.

He had long since stopped being annoyed at you, even smiling fondly before pulling into a rest stop.

Only when he slept were you allowed to drive. He rarely allowed you to be in control of the vehicle while he was awake, irritating you by silencing the radio to meditate, or trying to work out in your passenger seat, nagging you to be more attentive to the tarmac of the freeway.

You suspected he was planning, thinking, every time you pulled onto the side of the road to switch places with him. He needed to be _doing something_. If driving was what it took to keep him sane, his mind from working overtime, you were happy to let him do the bulk of it.

The late hours of the night were when he finally conceded it was too dangerous for him to drive unrested. He would sprawl out on the bench backseat, body rocked a little by the road, uncaring of the discomfort. You would catch yourself watching him in the rear-view, the way his mind seemed to run away as he slept, chest rising and falling with dreams and nightmares intermingling. He would always wake suddenly, making you jump as he sat bolt upright.

You caught yourself quickly tilting the mirror back up, distracted from the road for too long by watching how his face relaxed in unconsciousness.

It took three days before one of you suggested breaking the pattern, before the pair of you started to think beyond hour-to-hour survival. As you crossed state lines into Colorado, and you started to think long term.

“We’ll head to the mountains. We will be safer. Further from people,” Davos decided.

You had no better suggestions.

It didn’t surprise you when he squinted at your phone screen and began to guide you up a barely-maintained mountain track. You thought of the provisions you had packed into the trunk of your car, a fortnight’s worth of luggage and snacks from gas stations, nothing substantial. At least you had a full tank of fuel.

The track was horrifically narrow, even at the turn off.

“Davos…” You grumbled.

You flicked your turn signal anyway.

“Do it,” he insisted.

“You’re lucky I trust you.”

Busy turning, you barely caught his embarrassed smile.

From the passenger seat he scoured the environment, and you saw him give you a curious look, before he returned to the map on your phone. The evergreens grew closer and closer around you, the road turning to a forest path, making you fight to keep the car moving over the bumpy terrain.

The track took you zig-zagging up a mountain, and split off in places. Davos seemed to choose left or right at random, squinting at the satellite image on your phone, never saying more than he had to. Your faith in him began to wane with every near-miss instruction-change, your exhaustion with fighting the road growing as he remained stoic.

For sections at a time the road would clear, only to reveal the more appallingly steep mountainside, the path so narrow your stomach knotted whenever you checked your tire placement out the window, inches from slipping off the track.

After almost a week of running as fast as you could, this slow crawl made you nervous.

“Davos, I swear to god if I have to reverse down this mountain…”

He shushed you, pointing ahead as the road was crowded by forest once again.

“There,” he told you.

You exhaled, frustrated by the shake in your limbs from such intense driving. Your foot was shaking, your hands cramping, and you put the handbrake on.

“Just… give me a minute,” you begged him.

You let the engine idle as you stretched your shoulders out, taking in the claustrophobic place you’d stopped, crowded in by mountains and ancient forest. The thought of what might be out here, so far from civilisation, made you check your mirrors constantly, even stationary. There were no fresh tire tracks ahead of you, the rocky road surface littered with new growth, undisturbed by people.

This was rural, a good spot to hide, you conceded. But not somewhere you felt sure you could survive.

Davos was tapping at dashboard, anxious to move on. When you looked to him for guidance, he offered to take over driving, but you refused to let him.

“These roads are horrific, and I don’t think you can legally drive.”

He huffed, and you bit down a laugh at how he petulantly looked away from you.

“You’ve let me so far,” he pointed out.

“You know what I mean,” you snapped.

He seemed undeterred by your irritation.

“Then hurry up.”

With trepidation you switched the headlights on, the even midday sun barely penetrating the trees this far into the wilderness, and put the car in drive.

He grew less nervous the further you were from the main roads, a direct inverse to yourself. After a few miles you’d grown accustomed to the lack of other headlights. It seemed impossible, surreal, that you were crawling down this abandoned road. Each time you looked to the passenger seat, you got a reassuring smile.

His confidence barely soothed your nerves, but you leant on it anyway, relying on his certainly to mask your own fear.

“All roads must lead to somewhere,” he assured you softly.

The sincerity of his words made you shudder.

Soon enough you realised Davos had been right, a fact you met with equal gratefulness and irritation. For the first time in almost an hour you saw a sign of civilisation, a small dwelling dwarfed by tall forest, with not a person in sight.

It was completely dilapidated, and you should be horrified, but a treacherous voice in your head reminded you: _there might be a proper bed_.

Clothed in moss and chipped paint, you imagined this cabin must have been nice once. Built for retreats to the woods and filled with the warmth of people enjoying nature, it had a wraparound porch with covered outdoor furniture.

There was even a rectangle cleared to park the Chevvy, and you cut the engine to an astonishing silence, nothing but a bird call in the distance. As you opened your door hesitantly, Davos was already rushing up to the cabin, and you watched him, flipping the headlights on to try and guide his way.

The distinctive sound of rotting wood made you wince as Davos signalled for you to stay back, his foot sinking into the front steps. The half-beam lights of the car didn’t quite reach the building, separated by a line of trees, but Davos had taken the one hiking-kit torch you had.

The flashing beam of light signalled how he crept around the house, and you watched as the windows were illuminated, clinging to the car as birds called to one another, tree branches seeming to snap and move on their own in the canopy above you.

“Davos?” you called.

He wouldn’t be able to hear you, too far away and your voice too muted. Suddenly your creepy rest stop on the road side, curled up on his chest, seemed far more appealing. Maybe you could leave. Drive forever, or at least until your debit card was declined on fuel. You would certainly prefer it to this place.

Branches snapped beside the car where you were stood, and you prayed it was just Davos, or something you couldn’t see. One hand clutched the door handle of the car, your phone tightly clasped in your other. The battery was almost flat, and you’d lost signal miles ago. But you clung to it anyway. It was cold outside, but you couldn’t bear to pull your coat from the vehicle. The thought of what might be watching from behind you was too much to bear.

It was irrational, you knew, but being so far from Davos in the woods made you break into a cold sweat. You jumped at a distant howl, eyes scanning the darkness. It sounded miles away, but you couldn’t help the urge to run, to climb back in the car.

“Seems safe.”

You shuddered an exhale, startling as Davos approached.

“There’s fucking _wolves_ here,” you whimpered.

“I would prefer wolves to people.”

“I doubt it.”

“ _Bears,_ then!” You called to him, exasperated. “There could be _bears._ Davos, are you listening to me?”

He was already unloading the trunk, and you joined him in pulling out a backpack, clinging tight to his side as he marched to the sad dwelling he’d decided to camp out in.

“I don’t get a say in this?”

“Drive off, if you want. I’m happy here.”

There was a gruffness in his voice, and his words should have offended you, but you suspected he didn’t mean it.

You tried to be rational, and were left with the stark reality: this might be your best option. Free housing, safe from CCTV or nosy neighbours, where you could wait for the threat of Davos’ recapture to diminish.

“This is insane.”

As the last echoes of your voice rung through the trees, no doubt tempting a million bogeymen and monsters towards the pair of you, Davos turned to stare you down. His dark eyes seemed even wider as night drew in, and you saw the façade behind his gruffness begin to crumble. He’d be upset if you left, and you knew it.

So what could you do? Return to the outside world, pray no one had pieced together how you had aided Davos’ escape, and try to get a job? A house?

Or you could settle here. At least for a bit, alongside your strangest, most loyal friend. You could trust him to keep you safe from the elements and the law, and yes, even wolves.

He’d hauled your bags from the trunk, and he was just there… waiting. Watching you. Asking for your permission before starting this strange new phase in your lives at this rickety old section of woods which you certainly couldn’t pin down on a map.

When he said your name it was almost a whisper, a nervous plea. 

With a groan, you grabbed a few more bags from the trunk, and you stayed.


	4. The Cabin

Unloading the car was a relatively easy task. Finding somewhere to put the bags was another matter entirely. Cast in shadows, the corners of the cabin were hard to see, with patches of eerie darkness for furniture and worn rugs. The floor was so cold it was indistinguishable from damp, the air inside the cabin stale with the distinctive musk of aged wood and motheaten fabrics.

With light strained through the trees from the setting sun, you set everything down on a rickety kitchen table.

The pair of you opted to leave most of the food in the car, hoping it might reduce the amount of creatures tempted inside. You forced Davos to scour the whole cabin for rats and various other small animals before finally stepping inside.

It was far from luxurious, and yet the tiny structure provided a little shelter from the elements, with the creature comforts of a compressed house. It wasn’t much, but it was better than roadsides. You brought your bags inside without any further complaint, aware of Davos’ eyes on you, watching to see if you would flee at any second.

“Could be worse,” you’d concluded, once you had climbed tentatively up the rickety stairs.

The inside seemed near-watertight, aside from the failing front door, and the odd leak through the roof, making the dated wallpaper discolour and peel. More than just having a roof, it was furnished. To your delight there was a wooden-framed double bed at one end of the room, adjacent to a couch. There was only one other room, a small bathroom with the window cracked, but the sight of the tiny bathtub almost brought tears to your eyes.

It was a race against time to examine the property before night fell.

Davos took a methodical approach to walking the perimeter of the building, flashlight in hand, while you loudly announced what you’d found inside.

“Blankets!” you called to him, “There’s blankets!”

After a week of sleeping under a coat, opening the large wooden trunk at the foot of the bed was like discovering a cornucopia of comfort. The heavy, carved lid seemed to have been enough to keep the elements out, even when the front door had failed, and you delighted in the neatly folded woollen blankets inside.

More than that, the chest contained stacks of clothes. Oversized men’s clothes, seemingly belonging to someone older, but enough to make you ecstatic at your luck.

They wouldn’t likely fit either of you ideally, but that didn’t matter. Jeans, overcoats, thoroughly holey sweaters and t shirts would finally give him something to wear besides your sweatpants and stretched sleep shirts. And Davos could throw out those prison clothes, never to be seen again.

The rest of the building hadn’t fared as well, but plastic sheeting over the couch and bed seemed to have largely saved the furniture from the worst of the leaking roof. The kitchenette was rusted, the generator-run appliances out of commission for even longer than the generator itself, which housed in a wooden hutch outside the cabin.

It didn’t matter anymore – a bed and a roof were more than enough. You could work everything else out at sunrise. As you examined the items left in the cabin, you tried to work out how long it had been since the property was used.

With each 1998-dated newspaper, you grew less and less worried about the risk of an owner returning to evict you from the cabin. Although you grew more and more worried about the roof caving in.

This place had been truly forgotten, left behind by civilisation, likely nothing more than a footnote in a will no one had bothered to investigate.

It made you sad, a little. Someone must have truly loved this cabin once. There were watercolour paintings on the wall and well-worn jumpers, a stack of firewood beside the wood burner, readied for another cosy winter night which had never come for the owner.

Footsteps made you look up.

“Seems safe,” Davos informed you gruffly as he re-entered the room, pulling the door closed him.

The hinges made a loud protest, and rust flaked from them onto the hardwood of the floor, but soon enough the two of you were relatively closed in from the elements. He approached you, looking over your shoulder at the various artefacts of the cabin’s history you had been examining, and you spun to see the serious expression on his face.

“Done a full survey?” You teased, knowing the joke would fall on flat.

Davos smiled politely. You were pleased to see him a little more at ease. You suspected this might be the closest thing to home he’d felt in a while, with feet on terraferma, nature surrounding him.

“As long as it doesn’t rain, we should be fine,” you nodded, pointing up to the ceiling.

Davos frowned up at the eaves of the roof, following your torch light as it swept to illuminate the cracks in the warped wood, and you almost regretted bringing it up. He seemed about to apologise, but you didn’t let him.

It wouldn’t help anything.

Instead you presented him with the stack of men’s clothes you’d found, dragging his attention back down from the potentially leaky roof.

“Look! I found these!”

He took the folded clothes tentatively, setting them on the couch and folding a jumper to inspect meticulously.

“I think they should fit,” you enthused, wishing he’d at least crack a smile.

He inspected a pair of ancient boxers joylessly.

“They will do the job.”

A silence tried to engulf the pair of you, but the noises of the forest were never far. It was strange, after the rumble of a moving car, to hear animal calls and trees jostling for canopy space, the whistle of the wind and the creaking of the cabin beneath your feet.

Davos was finally the one to speech, neatly folding the sweater once again and placing it back on the pile.

“Are you hungry?”

*

The sun was setting quickly, drawing in an alarming darkness which was impossible in cities or near roads, but reminded you so wholly of the complete pitch black you had experience each night in K’un-Lun. Darkness wasn’t something you had ever worried about in civilisation. In cities darkness was never _true_ darkness. It meant you were a little more cautious, maybe you’d turn the torch of your phone on, or walk on the side of the road with streetlights. Your day continued, your life barely changed without the sun. Only in rural places like this did it mean complete and utter deprivation of your strongest sense.

As the two of you ate in the thinning twilight you made a silent agreement to preserve your remaining torchlight, opposite one another at an increasingly invisible kitchen table. Knowing that your elbows were planted on the same piece of wood, even if you could barely make out one another’s faces, was all you had to wring comfort from. Davos had jammed a piece of degrading firewood beneath the door, likely split by an axe twenty-something years ago, and you had to convince yourself it would be enough to keep you safe.

The cooking facilities were barely better than in the car, but that was a problem for the next day, to be tackled with the aid of daylight and a good night’s sleep. You tried not to worry.

Your dwindling water supply, finite food options, and sheer _ruralness_ were all issues to be pushed for your mind, as told you gentle stories about his time in New York – quiet tales of curiosities and customs which seemed strange to him.

Occasionally you could tell he was quietly omitting details which would make your heart clench. Perhaps his would do the same, with guilt or regret. The conversation remained strictly surface level, wilfully ignorant of what was lurking beneath the waves.

Once night had set, and your stomachs were filled, there was very little reason for the two of you to be awake. Which left the question of the _beds_. Davos answered that quickly, however, settling on the couch with a grunt before you had even returned from brushing your teeth with a bottle of water above the dry bathroom sink.

You hadn’t been surprised the plumbing didn’t work, but you would admit to being disappointed as the tap turned without effect.

“Comfy?” you asked, feeling more than a little guilty about taking a whole double bed to yourself.

 _He offered_ , you reminded yourself. It was, truthfully, your preferred sleeping arrangement. Though you still felt guilty.

“Very.”

As usual, he was sincere. You pulled the nicest blanket from the wooden trunk, leaving it by his feet. When he didn’t move, you changed your mind, shaking out the fabric and draping it over him. He mumbled a _thank you_ as you smoothed the fabric out over, catching his hip, and you quickly retreated back to the made bed, clambering under the musty sheets.

It was almost strange to try and sleep without the gentle motion of the car, the safety of Davos mere feet from you. He was still close, certainly, the couch just metres from the foot of the bed, and yet it still felt strange. He was too far away.

Perhaps it was sleeping at the same time as him which seemed novel, or the knowledge you weren’t likely to be woken by a set of bright headlights or the honk of a horn.

Instead, bird calls and the occasional carrying wolf howl carried through the woods outside, making you shiver under the heavy blankets, pulling the material above your shoulders.

 _You would be fine_ , you convinced yourself _._ Davos had checked the house. Davos was between you and the door.

Logically, you knew you should be safer than ever. Yet your voice still shook at you called, “goodnight.”

Davos’ gentle reply was enough to calm you enough to sleep.

“Sleep peacefully.”

*

Morning came not with the crackle of a drive-through speaker, or the jolt of your shoulder against the seatbelt. Instead it was the soft light of morning filtered through trees and dusty curtains, the sound of Davos’ bare feet against the hardwood floor.

Your back didn’t hurt, and your head didn’t ache, even after spending a first night in a new place.

You blinked, looking around blearily, taking in the cabin in daylight. It seemed more homely in the morning, with soft, warm light illuminating the faded patterns on fabrics, and framed paintings of landscapes on the walls.

As soon as he saw you were awake, Davos began to pull the tattered curtains open, revealing the vivid forest beyond the single-pane windows. You were suddenly awake, taking in the beautiful bright green of tall evergreens outside, their trunks seemingly reaching for miles before finally branching into leaves and meeting the pale blue sky.

 _Davos must love it here,_ you thought, seeing the moment his eyes lingered a little too long on the nature outside. It was different to where he had grown up, certainly. But likely a sight for sore eyes after dull skyscrapers and concrete prison walls.

At the last set of curtains he opened Davos stood for a little longer, his eyes scanning the woods at the perimeter of the clearing the cabin sat in, his profile backlit by the morning sun as you watched him from bed.

“Strange, isn’t it,” Davos greeted you, “to feel so… close to home.”

You hated to admit it, but _yes_. It did feel like home.

Like the little cottage you’d been in K’un-Lun, or Davos’ minimalist room at the monastery. You weren’t sure if it was your home, or even what your home would look like anymore, but you could see the wistful look in Davos’ eyes as he was reminded of where he had come from.

“In a weird way, I guess so,” you offered, voice sleep-rough.

You didn’t want to leave the warmth of the bed, to go outside into the wilderness, where every little part of your morning routine would feel like a chore. But you would have to.

Davos finally left the window, swiping your keys from the kitchen table as he went to the car to cobble together something for breakfast.

You groaned, curling up for a few more seconds of warmth before sweeping the covers aside and letting the cold morning air embrace you.

As the chill of the floor seeped into your socked feet, you tried not to let your thoughts spiral into the agony of doing this _every morning_.

On the plus side, by the time you had dressed up warm and gulped down half a bottle of water, Davos had food prepared. He held out a portion to you sheepishly, using one of the chipped plates you’d found and dusted off from the cabin’s kitchenette, and you saw a tight grimace stretch across his face as he took a seat beside you on the couch.

Your grumbling stomach was grateful for the food, even if it was chips and stale pastries.

*

“There’s fishing gear here,” you told him an hour later, as you continued to look through the storage around the cabin.

Davos had helped you break the lock off a weatherproof storage box outside the cabin, connected to the now-dead generator, and was milling around nearby whilst you looked through the jumbled contents.

“Maybe we can fish? Catch some food?”

Not exactly vegetarian, but you would appreciate the food. Or maybe Davos would be pescatarian. In a survival situation.

You’d have to ask him.

“So, we’re near water,” he said slowly, figuring it out as the words left his mouth.

You raised your eyebrows at the realisation, looking through the tackle box you found, as Davos planted his arm on the cupboard door above you, his strong grip holding him up as he leant closer to you. You could smell him, as he reached over you to grab a trio of stacked metal buckets.

“I guess so…” You muttered, noticing the weather-worn life jackets which must have once been paired with some kind of boat.

“Brilliant. Stay here, I will find it.”

Then he was gone, heading in a seemingly random direction into the woods. He left you without time to protest, walking away with the buckets, and you sat back on your heels for a moment to try and figure out if you had upset him, somehow.

He was abrupt in a way you hadn’t heard since the prison, and you couldn’t brush off the feeling something was wrong.

 _He probably just needs space,_ you told yourself, truthfully grateful for a little space yourself.

Even if the forest was scarier alone.

You found a few more things, a pack of batteries and a lantern they could be used in, and you thanked whoever had left this place for being so well prepared. Matches and firelighters turned up too, blessedly dry, and you added them to the collection of scavenged things piling up on the kitchen countertop in the cabin.

As you stood in the main room, you were spooked by the movement of a creature under the building, instinctively calling for Davos before you realised he was long gone and snapped your mouth closed in embarrassment.

You needed a distraction, you chided yourself. That was all.

Fortunately a disintegrating box of DIY supplies sat below where the buckets had been, metal cans of paint and tubes of caulk rusting, but still seeming very functional.

_Perfect._

With enough practical work to keep your blood pumping hot through your veins (and to hasten the time before Davos returned to protect you from the noises emanating from the dark woods beyond the little cabin) you set about doing what you could to improve the weatherproofing of your new shelter.

Through the window, you could see the glint of your car’s paintwork, tempting you with escape.

*

By the time Davos returned, the sun was beginning to dip beneath the trees, and you had found a barbecue set, a wood-cutter’s axe, and a variety of hunting knives. The cabin was a little more waterproofed thanks to the certainly-out-of-date supplies you had used to seal window frames, and Davos looked slightly surprised at the spread of survival tools left out on the porch.

You were surprised too, as the porch creaked even more beneath his feet thanks to his weight plus two full buckets of fresh water.

“Found the lake,” he muttered by way of explanation, and you tried not to laugh.

“Apparently so!”

He gave you a tight smile, sweat breaking on his browbone and making his shirt cling to his skin even in the temperate afternoon air.

“It’s not too far, fortunately. I think there used to be a track.”

You nodded, trailing your eyes over his sweaty form in bemusement as he just stood there, a few steps from the entrance to the cabin. His muscles were shaking lightly from exertion, and you stepped back to let him into the kitchenette of the main room.

He nodded in understanding, placing the buckets down on the countertop with a last huff of effort. The third bucket was stacked under one of the others, and you mentally ticked another survival essential off your mental list.

_Water? Davos is on it._

“Safe to drink, you reckon?” You asked.

Davos shook his arms out, wincing at the weight he’d carried for what was presumably a pretty considerable distance. You dreaded your turn to fetch the water.

“Should be. We should boil it first, there is a firepit outside.”

“There’s a grilling set too,” you told him, “I found it after you left.”

For a moment he looked towards his feet regretfully, and you wondered if there really was something deeper going on.

Why had he left so abruptly?

“That’s good. We can cook outside, and I saw some edible plants on my search for the lake.”

You nodded quietly, looking down at your hands, wishing you had a phone or a computer or _something_ to distract yourself with.

It was strangely intimate, to be in a space with him like this. No cars passing by, no music, no texts or emails to think about. You found your eye contact with him uninterrupted, nothing else to distract you his brown eyes became too intense and you looked away once again.

Your mind was forced completely in the present, with nothing to pull you from the current moment, no excuses to leave an awkward situation. It reminded you of the claustrophobic neighbourly curiosity in K’un-Lun, newcomers made de facto celebrities simply by virtue of there being _no celebrities_. No global media, no breaking news. All entertainment had to be wrung from one another in K’un-Lun’s remote society, and you had struggled under the weight of the community’s curiosity and scrutiny. You could still remembher the pounding in your chest, the dryness in your mouth, each time you stepped into the street for the first few weeks you were staying in the city.

How you had looked down the lens of your film camera for something to pull yourself from reality when everything felt too intense, too many people spoke to you, everything felt so different to home. It was still with you, your beloved camera. It was packed away, stacked atop the photos from your trip, which were developed and unviewed in your bag.

After hearing the news about K’un-Lun from Davos, you weren’t ready to look at them quite yet.

Davos cleared his throat, and walked to the kitchenette cabinets to find a glass. Each step, clink, breath, was so audible you felt as though the volume of the world had been turned up.

“I, um, weatherproofed a little,” you offered lamely.

Your new roommate had the nerve to look surprised, his eyes tracing the ceiling and walls until he found the fresh patches of repairs you had done.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, seemingly struggling for words, failing to find the right ones.

“It was nothing. Hopefully we won’t be washed away when it rains, now. I mean… I expect there will still be leaks, but we can work that out as it happens.”

Davos gulped down water as you rambled, already contradicting his own advice by not boiling it, and you let your words trail out as you watched the movement of his throat.

He finished the glass, perhaps deciding to be a guinea pig for the drinking-quality of the lake water, and nodded politely back to you.

You closed your mouth purposefully, matching his silence.

A second more passed without words between you, before Davos moved his weight between his feet, rocking a little.

 _He must be exhausted_ , you realised.

“I’ll go and get some firewood,” he told you, his head bowed as though he was reciting an order you hadn’t given him. “For the wood burner.”

 _Take a break_ , you wanted to tell him, we’ve already got wood. S _it with me for a second_.

Instead, you let him go. He nodded to you dutifully, before leaving once again. You heard the drag of metal across the front porch as the wearily collected the axe, the window framing his shrinking form as he headed out into the forest. 

The grunt- _swish_ of him chopping wood was audible, if you stood by the window, even as he was hidden from your view.

You were worried for him, you realised.

He was working himself to the bone, even _his_ body must ache from the exertion after so long stationary in a car, and you let yourself ponder on… why?

To survive, felt like the obvious answer. But you knew he was doing more than that.

He was keeping himself busy, unable to stop like a shark has to keep swimming, lest he roll over and die.

Or begin to process what had happened to him. You suspected he would find that worse.

Night fell faster than you’d expected, and you wandered out into the woods to find Davos, following his voice as he called back to you. In more trips than probably necessary you carried the wood he had chopped back to the relative dryness of the porch, eagerly anticipating the warmth of the wood-burner inside the cabin. All the while Davos was chopping, finding fallen logs, some of the wood even still green.

“That’s probably enough, now,” you told him gently.

Darkness had closed in - to the point where you were struggling to see through the twilight. The shadows of distant trees morphing as your eyes played tricks on you, murky-blue creatures appearing from your imagination in the distance.

You took the axe from Davos when he offered it, the handle still warm from his hands, wincing as he lifted the remainder of the wood he had chopped into his arms for the short journey back to the cabin.

Thus was born a routine.

You would wake, Davos would open the curtains and deal with breakfast, and then he would _go._

He’d bring back all sorts of finds – mushrooms, chopped wood, berries, leaves he claimed were edible. One day he had even tried fishing, with absolutely no luck, returning a little grumpy but no worse for wear. You would invite yourself, occasionally, but he seemed to prefer to go alone.

Night fell earlier and earlier, the cold necessitating the lighting of the wood burner each night. As you lit a small mountain of logs and kindling he would hover near the light and warmth, both of you clinging to the fire all evening like moths.

Without anything to do in the early afternoon darkness, the pair of you began to talk properly.

As you sorted through your clothes, or did little pieces of maintenance, you would discuss things you never expected to talk to one another about.

It had always been inconceivable that you would meet him again outside of K’un-Lun, and now you got to talk to him about things in your world, inverting the conversations you’d had in his home city. You could ask him about New York, if you were careful.

 _‘How was your journey back?’_ Davos wanted to know, as the pair of you explored bags of clothes you had found stored in the eaves of the cabin.

Plenty of the clothes fit him adequately enough to be worn, and some were nominated to be torn up for bandages, but that was secondary. More important was the way Davos laughed at stories of you bartering with traders for rides across the mountains on their animals, you trying to buy plane tickets in cash, phoning your bank to convince them you were still alive and not – as they had decided – a missing person.

‘ _Was Danny happy to see you, in New York?_ ’ You’d asked him, as the pair of you cleared a fire pit outside. Davos’ story wasn’t exactly happy, but that didn’t matter, as the pair of you laughed with each collapse of the fire you tried to build.

You had panicked, once, at accidentally picking up a snake. Your cry out had caused Davos to tense up and try to protect you before you realised it was harmless and apologised to the poor creature

He’d told you about Danny as you cooked, about Colleen, scoffing at his choice in partner and yet keeping the conversation pleasantly light. You weren’t aware Davos could do _light-hearted_. Or that he could calmly discuss his brother’s relationship.

 _How are your family?_ He’d wanted to know later, as you lit the wood burner inside the cabin, both of you wrapped in blankets, side by side on the couch for warmth.

It was a pleasant surprise that he cared about your answer. The conversation morphed, like your others, easily twisting and turning into hours of stories and chatter. With each hour of conversation that passed with Davos, you grew more and more sure the pair of you would survive this as friends.

You had always had a sneaking worry that Davos wouldn’t like you outside of K’un-Lun. Or that the pair of you would be too different to truly be friends.

Within three days at the cabin, complete with a few full night’s sleeps and a couple of hot meals to boost your mood, you couldn’t remember ever _clicking_ with someone like you did with Davos. The closeness and easy friendship you’d shared in K’un-Lun hadn’t been some trick of the place, some dependence you felt on him.

No. Now, even more so than ever, you felt yourself drawn to him.

It was catching you off guard more and more, moments of affection for him.

When he taught you to forage, and smirked with each berry you stole from his bag, laughing at the staining the juice left on your face. He had reached out with a thumb to wipe it from your cheek.

You felt warmth in your cheeks as you noticed the way he would open the curtains each morning, taking in nature for a moment, always waiting for your ‘good morning’ so he wouldn’t wake you up. He was always a little ruffled, the oversized trousers he slept in hanging low on his hips, the sun brightening his mood as it hit his face for the first time each morning.

Davos had begun training before lunch each day while you occupied yourself with sorting the cabin, finding books and papers to trawl through. Your eyes would linger on his movements, the stark contrast between his graceful, Tai Chi like motions and his training strikes stirring up that same feeling inside you that you had tried to ignore in K’un-Lun for the sake of respectful professionalism.

You tried to brush those thoughts aside. A reawakening of your stupid crush on Davos was the last thing you needed, out here with no one else around. The man was practically a _monk_.

So you kept living your lives side by side, careful to get some space apart when you could, fighting the strange situation to keep some semblance of a busy schedule. You feared what might happen if you got bored. His training kept him occupied, motivated, and you certainly encouraged that.

You wished you had something similar to distract you from the feelings firmly planting themselves in your chest.

Once when you felt especially bold, you had offered to let him spar you, feeling a little guilty to see him training alone, but he had only shaken his head and graciously thanked you for your offer. Secretly you were glad, you did _not_ fancy trying to be on the receiving end of his punches, even with the help of a makeshift punching target.

Water continued to appear in buckets each morning, courtesy of Davos and the lake he had found. At the hottest part of the day you would join him on his walk to a nearby lake with towels and a change of clothes, washing in the fresh water.

Habitually respectful, Davos would face away as you stripped and washed, and you granted him the same courtesy. Nonetheless, you could feel yourself blush each time you heard his clothes hit the pebbled beach.

The hike back up to the cabin was always quickened by conversation, the pair of you checking in with one another, as his grown-out hair and beard drying unruly in the midday sun.

*

He’d tried to make nettle tea, the fourth day you woke in the cabin, and the pair of you had nursed a cup each as you sat by the fire – a peaceful silence as the pair of you took the tiniest sips you could manage. Finally, with diced nettle stuck to both of your lips, you admitted you didn’t like it.

Davos felt the same, laughing in defeat as he poured out the hot water onto the ground beside the fire.

“I’ll try again tomorrow,” he told you, “perhaps after searching for a strainer.”

The kitchen was pleasantly well stocked with utensils and pots, and Davos was a surprisingly good cook. Most importantly, he was adaptable, managing to make all manner of stew and broth from the things you scavenged as you rationed out the junk food in the car.

Each time he returned to the cabin with arms full of _things_ he decided to deem edible, your fear of starvation out in the rural mountains was pushed further from your mind.

He was providing food, water. The cabin was protection from the elements, and Davos’ presence made you unconcerned for the remote possibility that some camper or hiker might stumble across you. The prospect of wolves still sat a little uneasily in your mind, but that too would pass.

Begrudgingly you fell into a routine, and admitted to yourself things _could be worse_.

Had been worse.

You had adapted to off-the-grid living once, and you could do it again. Especially at this more temperate climate.

This place truly did remind you of K’un-Lun. As much as it felt strange to admit, you found some comfort in that.

The food was worse, the housing less pleasant, your days more lonely, but this hideaway certainly had more in common with Davos’ home than the grimy streets of New York.

Each day you reflected more and more on your trip there, finally giving yourself space to process it, until you couldn’t bear it anymore.

You had to check your notes, your photos.

You had to open the bag you had kept firmly closed since departing the now-lost city.

*

In the end it took a full fortnight in the cabin before you opened your camera bag, now stuffed with journals and papers from your investigation. The leather-bound notebooks you’d splurged on before leaving for K’un-Lun were filled, notes crammed onto every page, even the margins and inside covers filled with details you hadn’t wanted to forget in your article.

Useless now, it seemed. But you treasured them all the same, in all their creased, beaten-up glory. The leather had cracked a little from freezing, the spines all but destroyed from how long you had written in each journal over your two years there, and you took them from your bag carefully.

Davos was gone, training outside for the afternoon, as you flicked through sketches and notes, the stitching of each page giving more and more with each paper you turned until some were reduced to loose leaf pages.

You didn’t mind, they were only useful for you own memories now.

The only things in your hiking backpack which hadn’t endured the trek to and from K’un-Lun were the photos you had developed. They were newly printed and placed in neat envelopes, still sticker-sealed from the printers, and you felt yourself holding your breath as you felt the weight of the photos inside those innocuous branded folders.

Your editor had told you that you were crazy, taking as many SD cards and film reels as you had. But perhaps some part of you had known your journey to K’un-Lun would not be a quick one. A huge stint of your life was captured on your cameras, and now here those memories were – three one-inch stacks of 6”x4” photos.

You placed them out on the coffee table beside your pile of journals, finally breaking through the sticker-seal of the first pack.

The first photo almost brough tears to your eyes.

It was a blurry selfie, taken for no reason other than your own memories. Perhaps you’d expected it to come out clearer, but the light was low as the sun set over the outlines of distant mountain peaks, your teeth visible as you grinned wide, the camera too close to your face.

It was as horrible photo, in some ways, but you were still forced to put the stack of photos back onto the table and take a deep breath at the wave of nostalgia which ripped the air from your lungs.

The photo had been taken blindly with an outstretched arm on your hike up to K’un-Lun. Before you met Davos. Danny. Everyone you had known in the hidden city.

Before your near-death struggle, barely a day into your hike, back when you would still cross paths with an occasional other adventurer in mountains which felt like foothills. You could never have guessed back then that this supposedly career-making project would end so strangely.

You heard Davos’ grunt as he threw a punch outside, and forced yourself to calm down, dabbing at your eyes.

Next.

A thin ravine mountain pass. Your hands had been frozen as you took this photo, your fingers shaking as you pulled your gloves off and spent a precious few seconds of charge on your digital camera to photograph the most audacious mountaineering challenge you had ever faced. At that point in your life, at least. Worse had certainly come after, but you’d wanted to document how treacherous your path to K’un-Lun had been.

 _This can’t be the route_ , you recalled thinking, _but then again, if it were easy, everyone would do it_.

You would recall thinking that photo would be after the second paragraph of your viral article. Maybe it would be printed in Nat Geo. Shown on the news. You would be lauded as a brave, intrepid journalist.

Quickly that photo joined the first back on the table, face down as you picked up the next image.

There was a time skip, you realised. You hadn’t taken a single photo since you’d started to struggle on the mountain pass. There was no documentation of your meeting Davos, of the people who had swarmed around as he helped you into someone’s home to warm up and sip at a calorific broth. You had been too preoccupied to take photos, obviously, but you still wished you had some evidence of the kindness and humanity you had been shown by people who couldn’t even trust you, but recognised you as someone needing their help.

In your mind’s eye was the softening of Davos’ features as he realised you weren’t a threat and started to look at you as someone to help, his duty to those in need falling heavy on his shoulders as he saved you.

You could hear the tread of his boots outside as he practiced, his light grunts as he threw his body around.

In your hand was a photo of the view from the room you had been leant by a kindly older woman who asked for nothing in rent. Only that you helped carry her shopping back from the market and peeled the occasional vegetable when her aging hands ached too much.

She had taken to you instantly, maternal and achingly generous, insisting you stay longer and longer until you had felt guilty leaving.

The view from her home had been a mix of the city and of stunning landscape, and you had framed the sunrise with the wooden frame of her shuttered windows. You remembered the cold you had let in to take the photo, shivering through your nightclothes as you were briefly exposed to the elements before clicking the shutter and rushing to close the window again.

With a smile, you turned to the next photos.

They were taken from different vantage points around the city, some even around the monastery. Though you couldn’t remember taking them, you knew exactly where you must have stood to snap each picture, your clear mental map of the place strongly tied to the landscapes you flipped through.

As you sifted through the chronological pictures the subjects began to shift to people, as you had grown bolder and more accepted by the community.

There was a series of portraits, from a phase you went through of asking people to be photographed. There was a couple of the woman who had let you live with her, across the dinner table in the quiet of golden hour, her deep wrinkles betraying a life of grandmotherly smiles and time spent outside.

Wisps of steam from the dinner she had made were barely caught on camera, her beautiful home in the periphery as you’d focused on one of the kindest faces you had ever seen.

Then there was one of a baker, who had let you photograph him only after you bought an extra loaf. His daughter had asked to be photographed, a beautiful young woman who had tried to school her features into seriousness in the face of your lens. It hadn’t worked, your photo was slightly blurred by the girl’s laughter as her father teased her for her vanity out of frame. You preferred it that way, smiling as you looked at the slight closing of her eyes and smudging of her lips as she stifled a giggle.

You had liked her, as you recalled, suspecting in another life you would have been fabulous friends. You liked how she rolled her eyes at Danny’s flirting with her, even as it would horrifically embarrass Davos and he would hiss to his brother about the _rules_.

There was a portrait of Danny, taken against a wall as he tried to smoulder for the camera, no doubt imagining his handsome face would land him on the cover of GQ the moment you brought the image back to the US. He looked ridiculous, but it made you take in the photo even more fondly.

A few merchants and monks later was Davos’ portrait. You remembered asking him for days to take it, never receiving an outright no, but constant protests of not having the time.

Finally you’d cornered him. It showed in the picture, as he looked past the camera to where you would have been, his robe crumpled from grappling with one of the other students.

It was still a great photo, you realised, catching yourself staring at this slightly younger version of the man you knew for just a bit too long. As a branch broke outside from his training, you quickly put the photo aside face down, remembering he could walk in at any time. Not that you had been doing anything wrong. Your heartbeat quickened nonetheless.

There as a photo of you, taken by an overeager Danny as you, him and Davos ate together one night. The food had been bland, vegetables boiled until they lost their flavour in the monastery, but the company had made up for it. He had been overeager with your camera, you remembered, making you fear for the device as the took blurry photos of monks and you, completely freaking Davos out.

There were four photos of Davos taken by Danny, with the poor man looking progressively more baffled in each.

 _How things have changed_ , you reflected, recalling how Davos had driven your car without complaint.

He was remarkably adaptable, it seemed.

The next series of photos was almost a month later, taken on a busy market day, and you flicked through them with fond memories of the noise, the smell, the slippery stone underfoot from rain the night before. You had been comfortable in K’un-Lun by then, shopping for yourself and your landlady and no longer being cheerfully ripped off by every merchant you bought from.

Each picture was beautiful, colourful and softened by the reflections of the damp stonework, people going about their days frozen in time by your camera lens.

You were entranced, as Davos walked up behind you. He was so silent he made you jump as his hands settled onto the back of the couch, inches from your shoulders.

“Are those your photos?” he asked softly, and you turned to see him staring at the picture in your hand.

You nodded, moving to make space beside you on the couch. He dutifully sat, and you handed him the pile of photographs you had already looked at. You could see the sheen of sweat on his skin from his workout, and he wiped his hands on his trousers before he took the prints from you, considerate in a manner you often forgot him to possess. Davos turned the first photo over delicately, his brows furrowing as he took in the shaky picture you had taken of yourself.

“My ascent,” you explained, and he smiled.

“The happy bit, I assume.”

With a roll of your eyes, you bumped your leg against his in mock retaliation for his teasing, grateful for the return to a familiar in-joke about how useless you were at mountaineering. At least, by Davos’ standards.

He flipped to the next photo, squinting at it, no doubt trying to recognise the bit of pass you had deemed important enough to immortalise in ink.

You sat in companionable silence, passing Davos photos silently after you were done with them, trusting him to treat them with the utmost respect and care. He did, working through the stack in his hands, a few photos behind you, muddled emotions playing across his face as he took in each picture you’d taken.

“It’s strange,” he had murmured, as he stumbled across a photo of the monastery, “to see my home through your eyes.”

“I bet.”

He had taken a moment to stare at the image, before moving on.

 _What did he see in those pictures?_ you wondered. The grim set of his mouth told you it wasn’t the fond reminiscence you were enjoying.

He saw people he had failed. A place he had lost.

But it didn’t take away from your reminiscing, you barely noticed his presence as you passed him picture after picture, lost in your own memories.

The warmth of his body was the only thing which told you he was there, and you had almost finished the second stack of pictures when you stumbled across a crystal-clear memory.

You were hesitant to hand it to him.

The photo was printed into your mind as clearly as it was on glossy paper in your hands. You passed it to Davos without comment, but he stared at it instantly, disregarding the other prints in his hand.

The picture itself was beautiful. You and the two brothers, all looking happy and healthy, in your own ways, a still of a memory you reminisced on often. The three of you were grinning, bundled up in coats on a mountain path, Davos’ smile less toothy than yours and Danny’s, but still there, his lips pressed together at your antics.

When he saw the photo his expression dropped to a frown, but he didn’t tear his eyes away from it, his finger tracing the edge of the paper.

“Keep it, if you want,” you offered, noticing the way Davos’ focus kept drifting between you and Danny.

His jaw clenched as he took in the still, no doubt remembering the trip as you did. It had been a rare afternoon off from training for him, and you knew he had only taken the break because Danny had.

That was before their fight, before their brotherhood began to dissolve, the cracks in their bond splitting until they stood on opposite sides of a canyon. It had seemed impossible at the time, that their competition for the Iron Fist would shake their friendship.

Now you watched as Davos struggled to look at the man.

You imagined if he took the photo he might tear it, rip out his brother to leave just you and Davos. You hoped he wouldn’t ruin it. Truthfully you loathed to let it go, you loved that memory, but you trusted Davos needed it more.

He thanked you quietly for your offer, but replaced the print on your stack, along with the stills of K’un-Lun streets and the architecture he had barely spared a second glance until it was lost forever.

You quickly flicked through the rest of the pictures, but Davos didn’t look at them for longer than a second, simply stacking them neatly and holding his hand out to take the next photo once you were done with it.

When you reached to open the third envelope, he stood quickly.

“I think I’ll make dinner.”

“Oh,” you frowned, “I can help, if you want. I think it must be my turn?”

“No, I’ll start the fire. You keep…” he gestured to the table, the keepsakes which littered it, “doing this.”

You nodded, your lips pressed together in concern, as Davos walked out the front door to begin building the fire outside.

Preoccupied, you barely noticed as your thumb tore through the seal on the last envelope. As you opened the pictures, you gasped, glad Davos was out of earshot.

The first photo was a candid, proudly atop the rest of the pile, and honestly you’d felt a little strange taking it. You had wanted it for you own memories, promising yourself it would never be printed. As you took in the scene now, you were glad you had it. And incredibly glad Davos had gone outside.

In the candid was Davos’ mother, looking beautiful and taking up the centre of the frame, even as she was dwarfed by the men around her. Priya was mid-conversation, her husband and son listening intently, and even from the distance the photo had been taken at you could see the sincerity and respect in Davos’ eyes as he listened. You could never understand how he loved her so much, even as she barely appeared to care about him beyond his future mantle as the Iron Fist, but how he looked at her almost took your breath away – even in a poorly lit candid.

Quickly the photo found its way back into the envelope, to be buried at the bottom. Maybe you would give it to Davos someday, but not now.

The rest of the photos documented either side of the fight. Tensions had been high, your outsider observations and the click of your shutter unwelcome as this ancient tradition was observed. You had snuck a photo of Danny’s tattoo when it was fresh, mainly because the new Iron Fist had been ecstatic to see it immortalised on the tiny screen of your digital camera.

Davos had been unwilling to even see you, let alone be photographed, after his defeat. You didn’t have a photo of his injuries, but your memory was vivid enough. If you closed your eyes you could see the blood, the scars and scabs lasting looking fresh for weeks and weeks. There was a sketch in one of your notebooks somewhere.

You had needed that horror show out of your mind, onto the paper, but it had hardly helped.

The last of the stack was a set of photos taken in rapid succession once you had realised you were going to leave. They seemed duller somehow, once Danny and Davos had left. They were beautiful and professional and publishing-worthy, but the soul had been ripped out of them.

None of those pictures had a _story_.

You put the last half of the stack away after barely a glance, knowing you would have had everything you needed, if publishing was even a remote possibility.

A distant dream now, you supposed.

Outside Davos had started a fire, the smell of smoke creeping into the cabin, and you wandered to the kitchen to begin looking through your supplies.

Joining you moments later, Davos took less than a minute to gather everything he wanted to cook, dragging a pot of water outside to put together another foraged stew – which always tasted strangely good.

His knack for cooking was yet another inexplicable facet of that man.

You usually just watched, as he chopped and stirred and tasted the food, letting the pot boil over the fire pit the pair of you had built until he declared it _done_ and you scarpered inside to fetch bowls and spoons.

Despite protesting you would cook soon, you liked the little ritual, and you suspected Davos enjoyed the chance to prepare food which tasted as close to his home as he could get. There were less root vegetables, totally different vegetation, but he claimed to prefer it _any day_ to ‘disgusting pre-prepared food’ which ‘poisoned your body’.

You always jokingly argued that you’d kill for a takeaway.

That night the pair of you sat outside for a moment after you’d eaten, the pleasant air temperature and still-light sky providing a comfortable atmosphere. The bugs seemed to be leaving you alone too, and you sighed as you took in the clean air around you. When you’d built the fire pit, you had found a felled log which you’d worked together to drag towards the cabin. Now it formed a bench for the pair of you to sit, barely a foot apart and barely a foot off the ground. You like it, though. Davos had never tried to find another seating arrangement.

“It was strange, seeing it again,” Davos said suddenly.

“Yeah.”

You could tell the photos were still on his mind, perhaps stirring up some memories he’d been trying hard to repress. You wondered if you were a constant reminder of what he had lost. Of the place he had come from.

“I’m glad you have photos. It’s important that some memory of K’un-Lun exists. As long as it is remembered, it is never really gone.”

Davos’ words sounded like a blessing. Approval, from perhaps the only person left alive who had the authority to choose how his people were remembered. The buzz of crickets and the rustle of trees were the soundtrack as you nodded respectfully.

After a second he sighed heavily, and you leant closer to him on the log. He didn’t recoil as you dropped your head to his shoulder, resting against him.

He needed the support more than you, emotionally. But you let your body fall against his a little, enjoying how he tensed up to be your rest.

“I’ll keep them safe,” you promised, your words heavier than you expected.

“Thank you.”

You could feel the rumble of Davos’ voice against your ear as he replied.

His breath across your cheek made you shiver, and you were acutely aware of each tense and twist of his body beside yours.

Barely audibly, he sighed.

You wondered what was going on inside his head. Was he as entranced by your every movement as you were his? Did he wish your skin was a little closer? Wish he could feel you properly? In that moment you felt full force the magnetism he’d always possessed to you. In many ways he was still the curious stranger who you wanted to deeply know, an enigma you were naively sure you could crack.

Now, older and wiser, you weren’t sure you anyone on earth could crack this man.

Though perhaps you had the best odds.

You remembered back in Tibet, crouching a corner of a city now long gone, how he’d shyly told you about the path he had chosen.

Nothing could distract from his mission. No lovers. No romance. He couldn’t even, officially, have friends.

Did that still apply, now that he was so far from his path?

The path might as well have vanished along with the rest of his home, but he was still following it, not needing the signposts anymore.

With a quiet nod and a goodnight, Davos stood and walked into the cabin, shrugging you off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More exposition! They find a cabin! Not much dialogue!  
> This fic has it all folks.
> 
> Lets play a game of 'which moment in this fic broke my heart as I wrote it?'  
> Answer: the photo of Priya


	5. Throwing Punches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT TW: self-harm (Davos self punishing, past-tense) & show typical violence.  
> Drop a message if you've got any further concerns / want more details before reading <3 
> 
> This is the heaviest this fic gets, I promise.

_TW: Implied self-harm (to be on the safe side), mainly just show-typical violence though._

Another week slipped by like it was nothing, and Davos began making training the core component of his routine.

It had started simple, easy, runs and Tai Chi and throwing punches against the air or fabric. The last few days he’d taken to hitting objects. Each time you looked out to check on him, it had been something new.

It was an unusually cold day, and you’d overslept. You realised he was outside by the time you awoke to the late morning half-light of the cabin, its curtains still closed, sounds of Davos training outside.

He had left food on the countertop in the kitchen for you, but apparently the appeal of training had drawn him outside. You saw he’d left you berries and a packet of chips, and you suddenly didn’t feel like eating.

Instead you watched from the porch as he trained, wincing with each crack of his fist against the rotting tree, wishing he’d stop. The skin of his knuckles would crack soon, blood tinging the bark, and he’d stop. Only to train again the next day, with freshly formed scabs to break.

You could tell something was missing, the grunts when his punches were stopped by dead wood, the disappointment when each session barely left the tree damaged. No red glow. No crumpling of metal. It was just him: flesh and blood.

Too much blood for your liking. He had usually scrubbed it from his clothes in the creek nearby, tinging the water pink before the current quickly washed it away. He tried to hide it from you. You let him pretend, both of you allowing yourselves to live in the fantasy that you didn’t know what he was doing to himself. Punishing himself.

It was a strange world you’d made for yourself, filled with conversation topics not to touch, rituals you couldn’t interfere with. You didn’t comment on the poor quality of the food. He slept on the couch, facing away from the bed. His strange acts of caring for you had to go unnoticed, or he would be embarrassed by them. All these little parts of your routine, enough to keep the peace, and hide from reality.

Lately Davos had been even more dedicated to his role of easing your lives at the cabin. He had even taken to washing your clothes alongside his, despite your protests that you could do it. It was a little infuriating, how he wouldn’t let you help with a single thing. Every time you went to leave the cabin, he’d ask where you were going, offering to do an errand for you.

Not that he’d ever accept help in return.

“No man is an island,” you’d told him once.

He liked a riddle. A metaphor. You’d hoped it might get through to him.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

In the time you’d been apart Davos had become an island, you feared. An island in the middle of the biggest ocean on earth, battered by oversized waves, unable to be reached, refusing to ask for help even through the mightiest storms. You had no idea how to reach him, what bridge, boat, resource, you’d need to get to him.

You heard him roar as he struck the tree trunk hard, the sharp snap of his shoulders and hips back into place, giving a faux-proper form to his glorified self-destruction.

“Davos…”

Making sure he could hear you, you rose and walked up behind him, boots unfastened around your ankles. He hadn’t looked back yet, centring himself for another punch, and you saw blood seeping through the makeshift bandage on his right fist.

This had to stop.

You didn’t care how he was raised, what he thought training should be, he was hurting. This wasn’t the answer to whatever was going on inside his head. He could talk it though, meditate, you just had to stop him injuring himself.

You clamped one hand on his shoulder, hoping you might distract him. Then, you screamed. Davos spun, knocking your elbow aside with his own, eyes wild as his foot collided with your chest, throwing you to the ground with a _crack_ , panting with adrenaline as he stepped back from you, fists raised.

It all happened in a single second, one fluid motion, familiar and easy. Like it was second nature to him. Your scream made birds panic and rise from the trees, their wings and your voice echoing through the tall evergreens and you groaned on the ground. Your hands were held out ahead of you, one wrist aching from catching you as you collided with the floor, shaking as you protected your face from him.

You couldn’t speak, assessing the new aches in your body, and trembling in fear of him.

You heard the thud as he dropped to his knees.

He was clutching his own fist, eyes screwed closed, unmoving as you struggled to your feet and inside the house. When you closed the front door, he was still on the ground outside.

Only one door in the whole damn cabin locked, rickety and barely on the hinges, but it was enough to send you scrambling for protection behind it. On trembling feet you closed yourself in the bathroom, knowing the tiny sliding lock couldn’t keep Davos out if he wanted to get in, but hoping he would get the hint and stay away.

Looking in the cracked mirror, you couldn’t stop shaking.

You were terrified.

The man outside was dangerous. And you were never more acutely aware of the fact.

You had been treating him like he was simply an old friend, laughing as he listened to the radio and pretending to be on some Bonnie-and-Clyde road trip together. You had been wrong. The ache in your sternum reminded you who he was.

Even without the Iron Fist, he could have killed you by accident.

And you were sure it was an accident.

If he wanted you dead you would be, you realised numbly. He could have crushed your ribs, or choked you, let his boot finish the job as you collapsed to the floor. You shook at the memory of just how easily he’d beaten you to the ground.

There was a bucket of water in the bathroom, one of the pair Davos brought in each morning before you woke up, and you used the whole bucket to clean your hands, the imprinted sticks and leaves flaking off into the water. Your palms and back ached from hitting the ground, but they were nothing compared to the agony in your wrist and sternum.

If anything was broken, you had no way to set it. The simplest injury could mean infection or death, out here. You flexed your hand, wincing, convincing yourself the joint was fine. _You were fine._

Stripping your shirt off, you looked in the mirror, taking in the bootprint he’d left through your thin shirt. Bruising was forming already, and you were almost impressed by the damage he’d done you with a single kick.

The deep breaths you took ached, but they calmed you, reminded you you’d be _fine._

_It was an accident._

Light footsteps outside made you halt your exhale, staring at your own face in the mirror as you heard Davos pacing.

Your hands shook again. In your own mind, you begged for him to stay outside. Not to come in.

The creaking of floorboards called their warning that he was getting closer to the door, his boots colliding with the wood right outside the threshold. For a second he stayed there, mere feet away, and the breath you were holding made your lungs ache even more than they already did. Then, he walked away.

You heard the slam of the cabin door, the protesting creak of the steps outside as he walked heavily down them. A moment passed and you let yourself breathe again, nursing your wrist against your body. When you were beginning to relax, you heard him. The forest bristled around the cabin as Davos roared into the trees, distant but still loud, sending ice down your spine.

Then, nothing.

He was gone until nightfall.

Even as you ached, you began to worry for him. You’d pulled yourself out of the bathroom, breathing a sigh of relief that the cabin was empty, cocooning yourself in blankets on your bed as you stared blankly ahead, book in hand. When the sun dipped from the sky you lit the fire one-handed with what little wood you had, listlessly wandering around to find things to burn, too afraid to wander into the forest. Bears, you told yourself. Bears and mountain lions and wolves. That was what scared you.

Not the man who was prowling out there, more dangerous than either.

Red flecks were rising through the bruising on your chest and wrist, the latter swelling, making every simple chore around the cabin agonising.

Suddenly, you could see Davos everywhere. His sleeping blanket folded on the couch, his strength in the chopped logs by the fire, his coat folded on the kitchenette table. He hadn’t taken it.

Perhaps he didn’t need it. After a lifetime in K’un-Lun, you supposed he’d be used to the cold.

It was rare for you to be here alone at night. Davos liked to be near the cabin, liked to protect it. You found yourself bored without the company. For a while you clutched the keys to your Chevvy, considering just… _going_. You’d checked on the car a day ago, it wasn’t a long walk, though certainly it would be harder to find at night.

You could be free. Safe from Davos. You could leave him out here, he’d probably be fine. Handing yourself in would be the best option. His words from the first night you’d spent in your car echoed dully in your head: _“He kidnapped me!”_ You could tell the law. “ _I escaped! I have the bruises to prove it._ ”

With a sigh, you realised you didn’t have the heart to do it.

You clicked the metal keys against each other, staring into the flames as you wondered where the hell to go from here. A dulled bronze key, well-worn and familiar, taunted you. The apartment you’d had before K’un-Lun. The last place you’d called home. The apartment was certainly no longer yours, and you wondered if they’d changed the locks when your rent payments ceased. You’d cleared out the place when you left, the three bags in your car all you had. It was no safe haven now. Someone else called it home.

But you couldn’t bear to get rid of the key. You let the teeth of it dig into your uninjured hand, watching how they dented your skin.

You froze up as the footsteps approached, reaching for the metal poker beside the log burner, just in case it wasn’t Davos. A little bit, in case it _was_ Davos. The door clicked open, and he stood there for a moment in silence, letting the cold seep in.

You couldn’t help jumping as he kicked the door closed, barely moving from his spot.

“You’re still awake.”

“I am.”

He walked between you and the fire, steps careful. His feet were bare. You leant back against the couch in an attempt to read his face, but he looked straight over your head, eyes distant.

“I am sorry. I have hurt you, and I… I understand if you need to hurt me back.”

He held his hands out to you, sticky with blood, and you recoiled at the sight of methodical cuts across them.

“Rocks,” he solemnly informed you, like he was offering an apology.

You weren’t sure what he wanted, but you couldn’t look at the deep wounds across his palms.

“What is this..?”

He hung his head in shame, kneeling as if in submission to you, putting himself lower than the couch. You clutched the poker in your good hand, unsure what to do with the makeshift weapon now. His hands were still held up to you, bracing as though you were about to hurt him.

“I have punished myself. I understand if it’s not enough, though.”

“Punished yourself?”

No reply.

“Davos that’s… that’s not normal.”

Somewhere deep in his throat, his words were tinged with a growl.

“I hit you. _That_ is not normal.”

You had wanted him to stop punching the fucking _tree_ , to make sure he wouldn’t injure himself. Those perfectly parallel lines were worse. You forced yourself to peer at the cuts again, wincing at the congealed blood across them, praying none of them needed stitches.

“We… we need to wash these Davos.”

“No. Whatever happens to me is punishment,” he spat, and you recoiled, reaching for the back of the couch. The poker fell from your hands, clattering to the ground.

Suddenly his eyes were softer. They reflected your own fear.

“I deserve it,” he told you softly, like he was reassuring a child.

You shook your head, suddenly too panicked to speak clearly.

“No, I… I can’t believe you’ve…”

His head was hung in shame. You pulled yourself to your feet, dropping the blankets. You shivered as you left the couch in favour of finding something, anything, to clean the drying blood from his palms.

“We’re washing them,” you told him firmly.

There was one first aid kit stashed away in the cabin, with the products largely two decades out of date, but it was all you had. You brought it back to the couch, cringing as you tried to find a part of Davos’ hands which weren’t injured to hold on to. He pulled away from you, refusing to break his pose, and you sighed.

“This is ‘gonna hurt,” you warned.

You tipped a disinfectant fluid over the wounds, the smell making you wince, and long for better resources. For a trip back to the real world where you could get these injuries the help they needed. For a world where you _weren’t_ living in a cabin, watching it fall down around you, trying to help an expert martial artist from another world control his own emotions.

 _This should sting_ , you thought numbly, feeling one of the tiny cuts on your own hand burn with pain as the liquid hit it. You pulled your cut hand away, wiping the stinging cut clean on your trousers before looking back at the man before you.

Davos’ entire hands were sliced to ribbons, yet he didn’t flinch at the burning of disinfectant. You saw a vein bulge in his forehead as he gritted his teeth, unmoving.

“Tell me if it hurts too much,” you muttered, grimacing as you checked his newly-hurt skin for spots you had missed.

“No.”

You paused, glaring at him. He’d grunted the single syllable, his whole body tensing from pain, and you suddenly found yourself furious at him.

“You’re being _stupid_. Tell me if it’s too much.”

Your words were bitter, spat at him, and he submitted. This man could kill you a dozen times in a minute, and he bowed his head and let your insults wash over him, absorb through his skin.

“I’m sorry.”

“What does this achieve? This… destroying yourself?”

“What I did required punishment.”

He stared down at his hands, focussing on letting the pain in them was over him. _Waves_ of self-punishment. Then, you realised what he was doing. You pulled away, taking steps backwards, away from him, until you found his drying bandages from the day before hung across the shower rail. You were careful not to let them drag on the ground as you walked back to him, returning to your seat.

“And what did you do?” You prompted.

His shoulders rolled forwards, body lurching, and for a moment you thought he was about to throw up. His face was screwed up with self-hatred, with regret. Probably pain, too.

“I hurt you. Like a _coward_. I lost my balance, my peace, and I didn’t mean to, I… ”

You couldn’t stand to let him fumble for too long.

“It was an accident?” you asked him pointedly.

He nodded, as if that much was _obviously but irrelevant,_ and you wanted to scream at him.

“And you decided to go and slash through your own hands, for what?”

“I deserved punishment.” He choked out. “I still do. Pour more…”

You put the bottle down in horror.

“Who does that help, Davos? For fuck’s sake! Who does that help?”

His mumbles of balance and discipline were ignored, and you roughly bandaged his hands, already exhausted with his excuses and self-depreciation. Your back ached, you couldn’t eat from nausea.

Most of all, he hadn’t even had the decency to offer you a full apology.

He followed you like a kicked puppy to the kitchen as you got a glass of lukewarm, tasteless water. He’d collected it that morning, and you longed for the luxury of a fucking _tap_.

The following-you-thing was getting old very quick. You needed to be away from him. Away from his bowed head and the hollow look on his face. He couldn’t have a conversation with you. Didn’t care about your injuries, really. Only what he’d done. Just his blood, and his pain.

You needed an apology. A grown-up discussion about why he did what he did. He offered you neither. You wouldn’t accept split skin as a currency of forgiveness.

It was probably bad qi, or whatever, to go to bed angry. You didn’t care. You held out a hand to stop him as you walked towards the bed, making him halt in his tracks and look up at you with those big, sorrowful eyes.

“Goodnight, Davos.” You spat at him, wishing you had a door to slam.

Instead you climbed into the bed, pulled the covers over yourself roughly, and closed your eyes to stifle tears. You tried to ignore how he struggled to manoeuvre onto the couch, curled up tight to fit on the flattened cushions and broken springs.

Sleep didn’t come easily, but you refused to let Davos know that. You lay in stubborn silence, pretending you had already found a peaceful slumber, trying to ignore the hot feeling of anger in your churning stomach and the pain which blossomed through your body.

He sat in complete silence, outlined by the dying fire, meditating all fucking night.

*

“What was I supposed to do?”

Those were the first words which greeted you in the morning, mouth dry and limbs stiff.

The pain of your own injuries had gotten worse overnight, and you groaned as you stretched out. As you opened your eyes you saw Davos at the foot of your bed, a makeshift bouquet in hand, stood to attention.

The flowers he’d found were white and orange, and you couldn’t help your frown as he held them out to you.

“What is this?”

“An apology.”

The light was strong, the sun comfortably risen in the sky, and you were surprised you had managed to sleep in. Half the night spent tossing and turning awake would have that effect, you supposed.

“They look like funeral flowers,” you told him.

Heartless, but effective.

Davos walked away, head hung and bare feet silent on the ground. You felt bad as he left your eyeline, hearing the flowers roughly thrown outside. You fought the urge to pull the musty comforter over your head and hide from the world.

Instead you dragged yourself out of bed, rubbing your eyes and absolutely craving a hot shower. No chance of that. It was almost a month since you had enjoyed that kind of luxury. You noticed the cabin was a little tidier, Davos’ blanket folded and both your shoes squared off against the wall, side by side.

The very picture of domesticity.

You looked away.

Something else was new. A little row of wooden dragon carvings sat on the low table by the fire, and you picked one up, marvelling their uniformness. There were maybe a dozen of them in all, made from freshly cut green wood. A couple had specks of red soaked in, and you put the dragon down quickly. You were sick of seeing blood.

Two buckets containing fresh water sat on the counter in the kitchenette, a mug of the water boiled and presented to you with a breakfast of pot noodle and berries by Davos’ shaking hands.

His bandages were crimson with fresh blood.

You took the dishware with a sigh, placing it down beside the little figurines. He was guiding you to sit on the sofa, and you sunk into the centre of the cushions, leaving no space for him beside you. Already, barely out of bed, sitting was a relief on your bruised body.

“What are these?”

Davos sank cross-legged to the ground opposite you. Once again he had put his body below yours, forcing you to look down at him. It couldn’t be an accident. He was a man too purposeful and too aware of his body in space for the inequality in your positions to be coincidence.

You raised an eyebrow.

“My mother used to have me make them, back in K’un-Lun. When I was a boy. They are a symbol of respect: dragons. Wooden carvings can be symbols of penance. I have more to make, still. I am sure of that.”

You were a little jarred by his sombreness, but you tried not to show it.

“She would be so disappointed in me.”

Davos’ words were so broken, his repentance so sincere – even for an _accident_ – that he finally melted your heart. You ate.

Truthfully, you were starved. He hadn’t made dinner the night before, and you had been too shaken to feel hungry.

He stared down at his feet as you took your first bite of a typically-strange breakfast. You ignored him, instead examining the blunt-knife strokes in each of the characters. They were intricate, painstakingly so. You could see the fresh cuts in his hands from making them.

“When you woke me up, you asked what you should have done,” you reminded him.

You were testing the waters, speaking between mouthfuls of food. The meal was hot and surprisingly good, even if you had to lift the spoon awkwardly, using your uninjured hand.

Davos nodded keenly, the sag in his shoulders exaggerating the motion.

“What did you mean?”

He swallowed.

“You didn’t… you didn’t seem pleased. With how I reacted. Yesterday.”

“You kicked the shit out of me, Davos!” You couldn’t help laughing, even as it made your ribs ache. “And then what… you disappeared for a day, fucked your hands up? Made dragon sculptures?”

“They’re agonising to carve, making the hands cramp and bleed, it’s customary to make them as a reminder…”

Your sigh was loud enough to cut him off. He bit his lip like a scolded child. For a moment, you found your anger for him melting.

But he wasn’t a child. He was a _man_. Even as he sat there, you could see him putting the pieces together. Whatever punishments he’d has a child, he couldn’t carry them now. They weren’t _helping._

“I never want you to hurt yourself, even when you do something wrong. No one should,” you told him firmly. “It doesn’t help anything.”

You could see how he went to open his mouth, before changing his mind.

 _Good_.

He took a second to find his words.

“What should I have done?”

You smiled.

“Asked me if I was okay?”

Realisation crossed over his face so obviously, so openly, your heart ached for how unabashedly he was wearing his emotions. You ate more of the breakfast he’d made you, letting him choose where to go next. The downturn of his lips made you want to reach out for him. You took another mouthful of breakfast.

“Are you okay?” he asked, eyes wide, breaths laboured.

With the tables turned, it was harder to be honest. You crushed your urge to say ‘ _yes_ ’, leading by example.

“Well my wrist fucking hurts. So does my chest,” you bit your lip at the worst part, “and… I’m a bit scared of you.”

You could see him recoiling, beating himself up internally even as his hands remained completely still. He looked up, his brown eyes meeting yours, so deep and emotive you could see the devastation in them.

“What can I do?”

Shrugging, you found yourself more defensive.

“Can I..?” he murmured.

He shuffled closer, reaching for your hurt wrist, taking it between his fingers when you hesitantly offered your hand to him. The joint was stiff, you couldn’t bend it more than a few degrees, and you were surprised by the delicacy his roughened hands possessed as he examined the injury.

“Doesn’t feel broken. Give me a second.”

You had a mild sense of victory has he scrambled to his feet, pacing across the cabin with determination. You sipped one-handed at your hot water, waiting for him to return. He was stomping a little, you noticed, making himself heard as he returned from the bathroom. You could easily tell when he was approaching, certainly he was at no risk of shocking you as he crouched in front of you. One of his long training bandages was draped over his arm.

It was a nicer one, unstained by his blood, and you were glad. You hated those things, how they were always tinged red by his injuries. The strips of fabric he was wearing how had gone the same way, stained a deep crimson on one side from his morning of carving. Those wounds were somehow different to the ones he got from training. Worse.

You would throw those dressings away.

It had kept you up all night, imagining him on his knees, slicing his hands open, mentally telling himself it was the only way to reconcile what he’d done to you.

He was no stranger to wounds, the weaknesses and healing abilities of the human body. He bound your wrist carefully, the compression aiding the pain and making it easier to hold the joint straight, his face close to you as he concentrated.

“Thank you,” you whispered.

“Your ribs?” he asked, eyes flickering to your face before returning to the white wrapping on your wrist, tucking in the tail of the complex knot he’d tied.

“Have a look, if you want.”

“No, I –”

He stopped speaking as your fingers went for the hem of your shirt, pulling it up. You had no idea how bad the injury was, but it made Davos kiss his teeth, look down in shame.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could say, the words choked out.

“I reckon my ribs will be fine. They feel in-tact. Bruised, though. You’ve got quite a kick.”

Davos reached out, a tremble in his fingers.

“Can I...?”

He was tentative as he touched the mottled skin of your ribs, but you let him feel each tender bone. You hissed in pain at some of the sensitive points he touched, but eventually he seemed satisfied nothing was broken.

His hands left your skin as quickly as he was satisfied, and he muttered an apology as he sat back on his heels, letting you straighten your shirt out again as his eyes were trained on the floor.

“Happy?” You asked.

“I’m a monster.”

You frowned at him, rearranging yourself so you could lift his chin from where he knelt on the floor, forcing him to meet your eyes.

“I shouldn’t have let my reflexes act before my brain. You are the last person I would ever want to hurt.”

“I surprised you.”

“I’m too… I’m too dangerous to allow myself to act on _surprise_.”

His instincts were strong. Beaten into him. You could see true remorse on his face, had seen it in his body language the day before, sinking to the ground in despair the moment he realised what he had done.

“As long as you didn’t do it on purpose –”

“I would never.”

You sighed as he interrupted you.

“I suppose I can’t blame you too much.”

He mumbled out a thank you, clearly not believing his sentence was so lenient, but you weren’t done speaking.

“But I can’t accept this–” You reached for his hands, and he gave them freely, palms up and blood soaking the bandages. “This isn’t right.”

“It’s how I was raised. Pain for pain,” he admitted, and you stroked his wrist in comfort. He didn’t pull away. “I don’t know how to… how else to punish myself for what I’ve done.”

“Don’t punish yourself. Make things right.”

Lines appeared in his forehead as he failed to take your words in, your vague allusions no match for years of training.

“I liked the flowers, and the breakfast,” you offered. “Those are good ways to show someone you care.”

“You didn’t…”

“I was angry. I did like the flowers.”

With a gentle nod, he didn’t question you any further. You made a mental note to look for the bouquet later, and try to put it somewhere in the cabin. It was a sweet gesture, after all. You wondered which billboard, which rom-com trailer, he had seen which had told him flowers were a nice apology.

He certainly hadn’t given you flowers in K’un-Lun. Bread, fruits, little origami creatures, he had given you those in abundance. But you couldn’t ever remember flowers being among the curiously long list of gifts he’d sheepishly given you, under the guise of ‘I had too much’ or ‘I thought you might like it’.

You shuffled to the side, making space for Davos on the couch. You tried not to wince as you moved, but it was a losing battle, and you hated the upset look which flittered across his face when he noticed your discomfort.

“C’mere,” you told him, patting the empty seat beside you.

He hesitated.

“The floor can’t be comfortable. And I can’t kick you out of your own bed.”

The look he gave you told you that, if you wanted, you could. You ignored his sad eyes, watching as he held his bandaged hands close to his body, sitting himself down gently as far from you as he could manage.

What a pair you made, bandaged, bloodied, bruised, and fighting.

You forced yourself to relax, to slump back a little and huff out a breath as your looked up at the ceiling. You forced your mind back to K’un-Lun, back to what you knew of Davos’ childhood. You tried to sympathise, to understand.

Davos didn’t move a millimetre as you rolled your head to watch him. He looked at you nervously.

“Was it like that, when you were younger? Punishing yourself?” you asked.

He nodded sombrely.

“It taught us respect.”

With a low whistle you tried to recall back to your time spent with him and Danny, to the fresh bruises and injuries they’d compare while the three of you relaxed in one of your rooms. You couldn’t remember anything of this nature.

“I never saw it, when I stayed with you. Any _punishments_.”

Davos gave you a smile, dark and knowing.

“We learnt not to disobey by the time we were adults.”

“Or at least not to get caught disobeying,” you teased, remembering the occasional stolen goods which wound up mysteriously on your bed.

He gave you a flash of a toothy grin, remembering the same days, no doubt.

“It was certainly more a lesson in not getting caught,” he agreed. “My mother would have killed us, had she known some of the things we got away with…”

Priya had been a formidable woman. She’d hated you. Feared that you could lead her son astray. Or, more likely, Danny. You had been alone with her on scarce few occasions, but she had never spoken to you with anything more than distain.

You recalled that single photo of her, taken when they hadn’t been paying attention, printed in your carefully-protected pack of research materials. You vowed to show it to him some day far, far into the future. Not today. Even as you had taken it, you remembered feeling uneasy watching their dynamic. You had felt sorry for him, having such a fearsome woman as a mother, but never said anything.

She had been trying her best for him, you supposed, raising him towards the highest honour he could hope to achieve. You only wished she had been kinder to him.

“Your mother taught you to carve those dragons?” You prompted, tilting your head to the side as you watched Davos’ closed body language.

His wide shoulders were curled forwards in a timid way which didn’t suit him.

He didn’t move a muscle, you couldn’t even see him breathe, perhaps afraid of scaring you. Or hurting you. You let yourself unravel a little, limbs moving infinitesimally closer to him. He watched the space between you narrow, never looking up at your face.

“She taught me to carve all kinds of animals. A kind of meditative practice, in its own way.”

“Not when you’ve shredded your hands,” you joked carefully, getting no reaction from him.

“No. But I should do it more. I like it.”

You looked down at the little creatures inhabiting the table, poised on their little stomachs beside your plate.

“Was it always punishment?”

“Not always. The bigger ones are easier, less painful. It only becomes punishing if you already have injuries.”

“All that punching from training… I guess you spent a lot of time spent injured.”

Davos huffed a laugh.

“Not too much. And punishment is not always a bad thing. It builds character.”

You rolled your eyes.

“I think most child psychologists would disagree with you on that.”

You could feel yourself toeing the line, but even with a boot print bruised freshly into your chest, you weren’t too worried. Davos tended to let your _western-ideals_ bounce off him when he disagreed with them.

“Would you raise your kids the same way?”

Your question surprised even yourself. You caught yourself half-way through the question, you watched Davos’ surprise as the words left your mouth. An instant sense of worry filled you at bringing it up. There were far too many connotations, far too many unknowns. You regretted the subject change immediately.

“I sincerely doubt I will ever have to consider that possibility.”

The sadness in his voice surprised you as he picked up one of the little blood-stained figurines.

You let a beat pass before leaning forward from your seat with a hiss of pain, collecting your plate from the table in your good hand. As you took it to wash up, Davos stayed seated. Unusually. He normally rushed to clean up.

“I wouldn’t,” you added from across the room, “just for the record.”

*

He vanished again for the majority of the day, leaving you without distraction. You couldn’t help feeling a little guilty for you cheap shot.

More than guilt, you were worried for Davos. You hated when he left.

With his absence came a new fear: that he was away doing something stupid. You hadn’t been able to imagine what he would do to himself as self-punishment for hurting you, and giving him space to think made you nervous.

Despite your guilt, you couldn’t bring yourself to regret your words about Priya. Danny had confided in you a little about Davos’ mother, about her cruelty and judgement.

Even if Davos worshipped the very ground she walked on, you and Danny had never been able to fake much fondness for her. The subject of Priya had been widely ignored, when the three of you spent time together.

But you had meant what you said, and it was up to Davos to deal with that like a grown adult. He had felt indebted to his mother his entire live, been willing to do anything for her, anything to earn her respect. It was hard, now that she was gone, but he had to learn. If he couldn’t see that fault in how his own mother had treated him, you worried he would feel the inadequacy she had seen in him for the rest of his life.

This was healing, you told yourself, progress.

The evening crawled past, every noise outside convincing you he was coming back. You longed for a radio, some kind of distraction.

It never came. You changed for bed, and hunted down a book to curl up with. You had found the flowers and they looked a little worse for wear, already wilting and clearly roughly treated as Davos disposed of them, but you had hung them near the fire in the hopes they might dry out and be preserved.

Hours passed. As you laid in bed, you heard him come in. As he walked around the cabin, washed in the bathroom, you lay still. Pretending to be asleep would be easier than knowing where he’d been.

You peeked an eye open, just in time to see a shirtless Davos returning from the bathroom, standing in the moonlit kitchen for a drink. He retied the bandages around hands carefully, wincing as he pulled fabric from dried blood unobserved.

In truth you struggled to sleep unless he was here.

At first you had privately lamented having to share the single main room of the cabin with him, even if you were sleeping a good distance apart, but now you found yourself waking in the night and immediately looking around for him.

You had expected to sleep easier knowing Davos was back, but you only had more questions as you tried to feign and unconscious breathing patten, feeling your chest constrict as you failed to drift off.

As Davos settled on the couch, pulling his blanket over himself, you sat up.

He shouldn’t have been able to tell in the darkness of the room, lit only by the dying embers of the fire, but Davos’ senses were so well tuned you heard him mumble: “goodnight.”

You let a beat pass, but you knew sleep wouldn’t come tonight.

You were too worried for him.

“Are you okay?”

Your voice crossed the distance between the two of you weakly, sounding strained to your ears.

“I’m fine.”

“Really?”

You regretted the disbelief in your voice, as Davos gave a deep sigh.

He couldn’t be okay.

Not really.

“I’m just tired,” he conceded, not sounding as if he remotely believed himself.

The two of you laid in silence, his mind working overtime just as yours was. Out here, without anyone else to distract you or even any meaningful way to get space from one another, the awkwardness between you felt apocalyptic.

There was nothing else but survival, and Davos.

And they were intertwined, the pair of you a unit. Your survival hinged on Davos, just as his sanity hinged on you. Perhaps he would make it alone out here, punching trees and eating berries, but you knew he would have nothing to fight for.

No one to fight for.

You wished, not for the first time, you could peel back his skull and learn what was happening inside his busy mind. When he schooled his features into a slack meditation, was his brain truly calm? Was he _ever_ at peace?

His quiet breaths were too fast, too ragged. You pulled the covers tightly around you.

“What are you thinking about?” you called to him.

“My mother.”

There wasn’t even a beat before he replied, as if the thought had fallen out of his brain and across his tongue.

You remained silent, hoping to pry a few more words from him. The conversation you had shared earlier was still fresh, so much left unsaid even as you feared you had said too much.

“She never said goodbye,” he mumbled. “I… I told her we might never speak again and she couldn’t even answer me.”

With a quiet sigh, your words caught in your throat and you blinked, your eyes hot and threatening to form tears. Davos fidgeted.

“Would she be proud?” he murmured.

You couldn’t answer, you let the question hang in the air, Davos’ pain simmering as you pulled a pillow closer to your chest. You heard him sigh heavily, the sofa springs creaking beneath him as he rolled over, wishing you could reach out and comfort him.

“Does it matter, if she would be proud?” You let go of the words timidly, imagining the pain on Davos’ face as he considered them.

But it had to be said. He couldn’t heal while he was carrying the guilt of his past.

“She gave up so much to raise me. Sacrificed her time, fed me, clothed me…”

“Then she would want you to be happy.”

He chuckled, low and without real amusement.

“She would want me to be successful. To make her proud.”

“As long as you’re happy, I really don’t think it matters.”

Davos pondered on your reply for a moment, and you knew he could never accept your outlook. It was against everything he’d been taught. 

“I very much doubt that would be of interest to her.”

_Was he happy?_

You couldn’t imagine he was. Living off the grid, scraping by day by day with backbreaking labour, training himself half to death while hiding from the law with an old friend who he found bemusingly ill-suited to outdoor living.

“Davos you can’t live by what your mum wanted. Your whole life can’t revolve around her.”

“I know.”

He sounded as surprised as you felt, his words strangely light. A confession.

“Really?”

The question was cruel, but it snuck through the dark away from you before you had time to think twice. You imagined the fall of his face, his wince beneath the thick blanket as the word reached him.

A moment passed with just the whistle of the wind and the gentle rustle of trees outside. Distantly you heard the scraping of some woodland animal against the cabin. You were used to it now.

“She’s gone,” he said plainly, “I spent my entire life trying to impress her. And she’s gone.”

“I’m sorry,” you offered.

You wondered what he’d done in the woods. Whether he had played through every permutation of this conversation in his head, and chosen the path of least resistance. Perhaps he had, really, realised the truth of it all. Made peace with it.

“I don’t know who I am without the Iron Fist. Without K’un-Lun. Danny took that from me.”

You didn’t have a reply. You nodded silently, knowing he couldn’t see you. You left space for him to talk. After a moment, he took it.

“I wanted it so much. More than anything. It was all I was ever prepared for, the Iron Fist. And now that I don’t have it…”

“There’s more to life,” you whispered, “friends and strangers and art and love. Books and travel and fucking… _cycling_. I don’t know, whatever you want. You still have so much left to do.”

It had been something you’d longed to say to him for years, ever since you’d realised just how one-track his mind was. That life was for _living_. In K’un-Lun you’d accepted it wasn’t your place, that he had a destiny. But now, you wondered if he’d ever done anything for the sheer selfish enjoyment of it in his life.

Whether he’d ever had a meal just because he _felt like it_. Hiked a trail or wandered through unfamiliar streets just to see where he ended up.

Davos cleared his throat, the deep sound reverberating around the empty space.

“I wasn’t supposed to be like everyone else, with their trips to the market and their families, a home to go back to and a warm bed to sleep in. I was supposed to protect those people. Let them raise their children and work their jobs in safety.”

His voice was growing thick, words more biting as he pushed down the lump in his throat. You hugged the pillow tighter to your chest.

“Danny didn’t even _want_ the responsibility – didn’t want the _burden_ – of an honour I worked my whole life for. He just wanted the power. He wanted to beat me just to show he could.”

“Did you ever find out why he went to New York?” you asked gently.

Davos snorted, and you could imagine the scornful look on his face, his expression unguarded under the safety of night.

“To find his real family. I suppose we weren’t enough for him.”

“You were his real family, Davos. I’m sure he knows that.”

At his harsh laugh, you found yourself suddenly chilled to the bone.

“He certainly didn’t. As soon as he found the first woman who would have him, the luxuries of his old life, he had no intention of returning. We welcomed him, the outsider, and he left with _everything I had_.”

You remained silent, an old question lingering on your lips as you realised how similar your arrival in K’un-Lun had been to Danny’s. Not identical, of course. You had sought the place out.

Perhaps that was worse.

Did Davos resent your presence there, the way you had planned to crack open his culture for the outside world to see?

You didn’t speak.

“Danny was too weak for the Fist. He just took it so he could return to his _real family_.”

“Are you sure that’s why?” you whispered.

Davos lowered his voice matching your volume.

“It’s not… an easy life. The money, the indulgences of his old life in New York… they were too tempting. He was too _weak_ to guard the pass. And I was too weak to stop him.”

“It’s not your –”

“All he wanted was more power. And he got it, I suppose.”

You gripped the pillow against your chest tighter again, pressing your bruised body against it as you shuffled back down to lay in bed. Today marked maybe the longest heart to heart conversation you’d ever had with Davos. Filled with the least amount of prophetic bullshit he liked to recycle from his teachings.

Perhaps all his meditation was helping, he’d certainly done more of it of late. Ever since he’d hurt you, he had been outside for hours on end.

It unnerved you in a way, how he could just _think_ and _not think_ for so long, usually without a coat or even a sweater, exposed to the elements. You would always find yourself scared to make too much noise as he meditated, to interrupt him, like you might be afraid to wake a sleepwalker.

You wondered if he had finally realised something, finally given himself permission to think critically about his mother. His love for her had warmed your heart and chilled it at the same time, her constant abuse of his love for her giving you a kind of second-hand pain you hadn’t thought yourself capable of experiencing before K’un-Lun.

In the strange half-peace of the cabin, you found yourself fighting to memorise Davos’ words before they faded from your mind. As the pieces clicked together, you wondered if Davos had ever truly had anyone be _proud_ of him. Certainly not Priya. Not in any meaningful way.

Maybe he had been congratulated on a particularly good punch thrown, on a spar won with minimal fractures and bruises, his equally young opponent sprawled on a hard wooden floor.

But you wondered if anyone had ever been proud of _him_.

“I should have forgiven Danny a long time ago. It is the way I was raised, and I know harbouring resentment for a man who has succeeded against me only further cements how much of a failure I am, but –”

“You’re not a failure.”

As you interrupted him, Davos’ words faded away, your words carrying surprising conviction considering how drained you felt.

“You’ve been forced through an upbringing that’s… unimaginable,” you continued.

He made an awkward noise, as if beginning to correct you, but it died out on his tongue. You ploughed on.

“I couldn’t imagine raising children like that. Parents are supposed to be loving, unconditionally supportive. You’re not a machine, Davos. You don’t just have… one purpose you’re _born_ for. And I’m sorry that you were treated like you did.”

Listening to the quiet crackling of the dying fire, he remained silent. You almost wanted to pull him to you, or drag your blankets with you to join him on the couch. You lamented that the cabin didn’t have a light switch you could just flick on, the sudden overhead lights giving you a snapshot of his unguarded expression as he mulled over your words. You hoped he wasn’t upset with you.

Yet you were sure he was upset, in some way. This conversation was one which _had_ to happen at night, had to happen after hours apart for both of you to stew on your thoughts. You rested your head on the pillow you clutched, trying to ignore how much you missed the feeling of just _hugging another person_.

Danny had been a hugger. Perhaps the only person who hugged you in K’un-Lun. You’d relished the contact each time he saw you and bounded over to you, deeply American in his friendliness and need to be overly physical.

He’d liked that you would hug him too. You were sure of it.

You tried not to recall how long it had been since you touched another human being now, trapped out here. Davos certainly was not one for willing touch.

“I wouldn’t, by the way,” he rasped, words deep and heavy with emotion.

“Hm?”

You had almost been asleep, roused by his voice, his words clear and deliberate.

“I wouldn’t raise my kids the same way. I would raise them strictly, yes, but… I think children need love. Affection. In equal measure to how much as they need discipline.”

You didn’t give him a reply, wondering if his was what he’d been thinking on all day, as he wandered through the forest. You couldn’t help wondering if Davos had really felt that anyone loved him. Certainly not his father. Perhaps his mother had truly loved him, but refused to ever show it.

He’d had no romantic partners, no friends outside of the strange American who had shown up at his door when they were kids. Perhaps Danny had been the only person to ever show Davos anything close to love, a brotherly camaraderie ended too soon by the bitter loss of the Iron Fist.

It made sense, in a way, that he had such a bleak view of the world.

The images your mind conjured were unbidden. Soothing and optimistic and inappropriate and _impossible_. And yet in your mind’s eye you pictured a sunny afternoon spent in a garden, watching as Davos patiently taught his kids to fight, to value respect and honour… smirking back at you with every weak-limbed Kung Fu move they attempted, jokingly chiding him for how they would yell and shout. You told yourself you would forget them in the morning, these self-soothing figments of your imagination. Of a future far too hopeful to be even worth considering.

Still, it had been a hard day, and the visions of laughing as he pretended to be defeated by the clumsily-swinging arm of a toddler brought you enough joy to drift off.

As they crept into your dreams, you numbly realised the danger of what your mind was doing. You awoke bleary eyed the next morning with a sinking feeling in your stomach as the smile faded from your face, and the warmth in your heart slowly dissipated.

The sun had risen and the cabin was bathed in light, and the strange imaginary world your mind had constructed was long gone, replaced with an equally bizarre yet mundane reality.

 _Get a grip,_ you told yourself, wincing as the bruising on your chest rudely reminded you of its presence. It was a timely reminder of exactly why you refused to indulge in those fantasies.

You looked around the cabin in daylight, Davos’ blanket folded as squarely as usual, with the man himself moving absentmindedly around the kitchen as he prepared a foraged breakfast. You yawned, accidentally catching his attention, your heart sinking into your stomach as he sent you a soft smile.

“‘Morning.”

As you mumbled a ‘good morning’ in reply, heading to the bathroom to wash your face, you forced yourself to try and forget. Because otherwise, you were fucked.


	6. Cheap Wine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With tensions running high and food running low, the cabin becomes more of a prison than an oasis.

The quiet pattern of your days cautiously re-established itself as your injuries healed, the only alteration being the tentative way Davos moved around you. In the mornings he didn’t wake you, forced to stray further and further from the cabin in his bid to for forage food, usually returning around the time you rose with heavy footsteps and a forced distance between you. You would help him with breakfast, if you made it to the kitchen in time, the two of you working side by side to clean and prepare the minimal amount of food. You found yourself longing for the drive-through fast food Davos had turned his nose up at.

Even he would probably love to eat something deep-fried at this point.

Trying to fix up the cabin was a project which ebbed and flowed, it kept you busy, and your conversation through that late night drove you to try and make the building more of a home. If you were going to be stuck here, you refused to live with moss on the inside of the walls.

The flowers he’d brought you sat half dried on the wall (it had made him smile when he realised you’d gone out to find them), and you did your best to use the minimal rags lying around to keep the building relatively liveable. Davos would help, when he was in the mood, before the pair of you traipsed out into the woods to look for firewood.

It was a primitive way of living. Painfully slow, and yet a constant marathon for survival.

Strangely, you felt neither of you would have been able to do it alone.

The peaceful lifestyle was challenging, mentally, physically. And yet it was also stress free. You weren’t beholden to any pressures outside the wants and needs of your own bodies – warmth, food, water.

Davos could be moody, and occasionally his brooding silence rubbed you the wrong way, but largely he was easy company. After the incident he’d become muted, more delicate around you. Davos’ words were chosen carefully and his actions were smooth and deliberate.

He had taken to rubbing your wrist in the evening, even long after it was healed, a now-rare piece of contact you both so desperately needed that you turned a blind eye to the strangeness of it all. You could relax on the couch with him, sat opposite one another as his fingers worked firmly up and down the structures of your forearm.

You found yourself heading to the bed more regretfully each night, the temptation to offer him somewhere more comfortable to sleep never far from your mind.

“We should swap for a bit,” you had offered once, “I’ll take the couch for a few nights.”

He had looked at you like you’d grown two heads as he unfolded his blanket and didn’t even grace your offer with an answer. The slept on the couch yet again.

Once the ache of your wrist had faded to nothing and your ribs no longer twinged with pain, you were back to helping him do as many chores as you could. Davos’ business forced you to wander further and further away from the cabin alone, your navigation slowly improving, and firewood was frequently top of your list to collect. Cooking, heating, light, you relied on it for everything. Even when the pile dwindled below a few days’ worth, both of you grew nervous.

Out alone you had just hauled a heavy load of nearly-dry wood in your arms, lamenting that you had failed to collect more burnable kindling before the rain the previous night, when a noise made you startle.

The various animals you’d seen out here flickered through your mind, slowly morphing to more vicious beasts than the last, fear rising up your spine and settling there like ice inside your very bones. Aware of the weight in your arms which would make running hard and blind you to the roots underneath your boots, you froze, each hot puff of your breath coming faster and more fearful.

A branch snapped behind you in the woods, and you spun around quickly, darting backwards with a gasp of fear. You back hit a tree trunk behind you with a thud, your feet struggling to find flat ground amongst the tree’s roots and gathered wood clattered to the ground.

“Stay back!”

By the time you realised it was simply Davos – his hands steadying you as you almost stumbled – you were shaking. He looked back at you with horror, withdrawing his hands as though they might burn your very skin.

“I came to help, sorry. I’m… you’re…”

Davos stammered as he tried to apologise, to make things right. The taste of blood in your mouth and the sweat on your forehead didn’t cease as the adrenaline left your body, leaving you exhausted at the shock.

You couldn’t meet his eyes, looking around nervous.

“I should get back,” you mumbled, collecting a couple of handfuls of wood before scarpering, hoping to leave Davos far behind for a few moments.

You had no such luck. His impossibly light footsteps haunted you on the trek back to the cabin. You ducked your head, hurrying as much as you could, knowing you couldn’t lose him without some stern words. His puppy-like loyalty wouldn’t have been so worrying if he was a small dog, something fluffy and sweet you could overpower. But he wasn’t a handbag dog, he was a wolf.

The wood you had collected clattered as you threw it to the ground in frustration, branches scattering and falling through the dilapidated porch. You didn’t stop to watch how it fell, no doubt causing you a chore later when you tried to collect it from the muddy ground, and hurried to get inside.

With each breath your lungs felt emptier, and you couldn’t drag in oxygen, eyes blurring as you panicked.

Collapsing onto the couch, you hid your face in your hands as tears started to fall.

You heard the creak of Davos’ boots on the floor behind you, and chose to ignore him. He took slow, deliberate steps to sit beside the fire. He stacked up the firewood, taking his time sat on the floor beside the hearth, the soft _clunk_ of wood interrupting your desperate attempts to steady your breathing.

His silence was appreciated, but truthfully you wanted him to leave. Your desperation to breathe was only increasing with his presence, a full-blown panic attack on the horizon, as you felt the ghost of his boot print on your sternum.

The mark was long gone, and you longed to harbour no grudge against him, but it felt as though it was crushing you. Collapsing your lungs and bruising your ribs and making it impossible to survive in the same room as Davos.

 _Fuck_.

“Deep breaths.”

His voice made you gasp for air more desperately, hugging yourself. As he moved to stand, you shook your head, and he stayed sat on the floor with wide, fearful eyes. You couldn’t look at his face for too long. He was devastated.

“I am so sorry, I made you jump, I…”

You tried to laugh it off, hot tears burning in your eyes, knowing neither of you saw through your act. Davos shuffled further back from you on the ground, closing his eyes in frustration.

“You don’t feel safe around me,” he declared quietly, certainly.

When you opened your mouth to argue, no sound came out. He hung his head.

“Davos you’re…” you trailed off.

What? What could you say? He was already beating himself up, telling himself things far worse than anything you could throw at him. And yet you couldn’t bear to add to his burden.

He was what?

_Dangerous. Training endlessly for the apocalypse. Uncommunicative._

At times, he felt like a complete stranger. And yet in his eyes, as he stared up at you for an answer to his unspoken question, you saw the kind protector who had saved your life when you arrived at K’un-Lun.

“I’m what?” he asked softly.

“You’re so tense all the time, it makes me nervous.”

Your breaths came easier, and you kicked your shoes off.

 _I don’t need to run_ , you told yourself.

_I don’t need to run._

As Davos came closer you pulled your feet up to the couch, hugging your knees against yourself. He sat as far away as he could, his wide shoulders slumped.

“If I could undo it, I would give anything. I failed you and I hurt you.”

“It wasn’t on purpose…” you reminded him robotically.

You had truly never blamed him.

“That doesn’t matter.”

You closed your eyelids not for a sense of safety but because you knew you would hyperventilate if you looked into the deep brown of his eyes, his forehead lined with remorse and his hands twitching with nervous energy.

“What are we going to do?” you muttered.

His hand fell lightly on your shoulder, warm and an awkward gesture of comfort, his fingertips layers and layers of clothing from your bare skin and yet the strength of his grip still tangible through the fabrics.

His thumb stroked across your collarbone strangely, perhaps a weird copy of a movement he’d seen Danny doing when you were missing home or questioning your choices when the three of you were spending him in K’un-Lun.

Davos had never offered you any such comfort when you were staying in his hometown, but you thought perhaps he had gotten better.

As you flinched, your eyes opening, he withdrew his touch sheepishly, on the verge of muttering an apology.

“Not the time,” you explained softly, with an apologetic glance at his outstretched hand.

“Why are you afraid of me?”

His follow up question was quick, sincere, and yet you scoffed. You hardly believed he had the nerve to ask. He knew very well why.

“Because you’ve hurt people. You’re stronger than me. Sometimes you… you get angry. And I don’t know what I’d do if you lost control.”

As he closed his eyes, resting against the cabin wall opposite.

“It is… it’s who I am. My very nature.”

You shook your head.

“I don’t think that’s true.”

You challenge was murmured, like saying it too loud would anger the very beast inside of him you were denying the existence of. He sunk down the wall, and you were so caught up in watching him you couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It seemed like everything had already been said.

“Do you think I would hurt you?” he asked.

“You _have, Davos!_ ” You didn’t know how many times you had to repeat yourself for him to get it. “And you don’t hurt people you care about. It’s like, rule one.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

You sighed.

“I’m going to make you wear a bell,” you threatened, knowing damn well he wouldn’t know what you were talking about.

You took a moment to revel in it. In his ignorance. In how he’d feel left out that he didn’t know what you were talking about. _Good_.

“So you can hear me coming?” he asked quietly.

With a bitter smile, you nodded.

“Why do you even need to train? It’s not like anything’s gonna happen out here.”

It was low blow, your words spat as though they were revolting to hold on your tongue. You knew why he trained. Davos’ training was clinging onto his past, onto the one thing he’d always known. It was a mental need, not a physical one. And yet, since he refused to understand why you were scared, he could take the blow to his ego.

He rolled his neck in irritation, his shoulders hunched forwards as he clenched his hands together. You were cutting deep, upsetting him, and you didn’t _care_.

A hunger pang hit you, and you winced, one hand grasping at the skin of your abdomen. It wasn’t his fault you were hungry. You knew that. He’d tried everything, foraged everywhere, but the season had grown even crueller and the nature around your stolen home was thinning in its generosity.

Nonetheless, you felt a stab of annoyance at him as your stomach groaned.

Davos glowered at you as you winced, undoubtably putting your discomfort down to _weakness_. He had to be hungry too, you were sure of it, as you walked into the kitchen to scavenge any last morsel of food. But the pre-packaged stuff was long gone, the car emptied, and Davos had been frustrated by his inability to find anything for days.

He had roamed further afield, as had you, and the luck of your early weeks at the cabin had failed to repeat itself.

You leant against the countertop in the kitchen, still shaken with adrenaline, desperate to keep some distance from where he was sat.

“I train,” he called overly loudly, filling the space with his determined, carefully chosen words, “because you can never know what comes next. It keeps my mind sharp, my body _disciplined_. If you can even begin to comprehend–”

You slammed a cupboard door shut, cutting him off abruptly, the ancient bottom hinge of the unit ripping free of the frame and making the tacky wood hang at an angle. You blinked at it through sudden tears of anger, having gained disappointingly little satisfaction from breaking it.

“Piss off, Davos.”

Walking outside to the porch, you felt your foot sink into the rotting wood, a light sound of splintering making you grab onto the railing in panic. It was yet another thing to go wrong. You slumped onto the front steps of the cabin, staring out at the forest as you blinked.

You could see your car, a couple of leaves collected on the windscreen wipers since you’d last cleared it, and for a moment you longed to just _run._ You blinked away tears, shivering from the cold, as Davos’ heavy footsteps approached behind you.

The blanket he slept under was folded in his hands, and he draped it over your shoulders, making you flinch away at the sudden weight. It smelled like him.

He sat beside you, as far away as he could manage on the same step, and hung his head.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have… risen to that.”

You laughed hollowly, adjusting the blanket to fit more snugly against you as you wrapped yourself up, leaning against the railings of the steps in defeat.

“I’m so tired, Davos.”

“I know,” his voice was soft, and you realised dully that he really _did_ understand.

“I’m hungry. I want to go _home_.”

He sat silently, and you bit your lip. Poor choice of words.

“Not that I know where that is, I suppose,” you mumbled.

“It’s strange, isn’t it. To have this _longing_ for home, and to not have a home,” he offered.

You nodded. Tears began to fall faster, and you saw Davos shiver. After returning from K’un-Lun you had never been cold. It seemed impossible, after acclimatising to the weather there, to ever feel a chill in America. But the feeling had gone, the strange magic of the place alleviating and suddenly you were shivering constantly as autumn leaves fell.

The same must be happening to him, even after a lifetime in those mountains.

He would stand outside in a t-shirt sometimes, his skin rising in gooseflesh from the cold, and yet he would never come in. You knew he was thinking of home, then.

With a sigh you felt the last of your anger melt from you. It made you uneasy, but you shuffled closer to him, feeling your stomach grumble as you offered him a side of the blanket. The fabric was so oversized it could easily drape over the entire couch, and it dwarfed the pair of you comfortably, the heat of his body joining yours as he quietly took the chance to share the blanket

“I’m just trying to protect you,” he confessed, staring out at the trees even as your face was inches from his, watching him speak. “I don’t know what else to _do_.”

“A routine can be good too,” you offered, but he shook his head.

“I’ve had something to work towards my whole life. Becoming the immortal Iron Fist was beaten into me,” you winced, and he grimaced, “it was what went through my head with every bone I broke, every early morning training session when I forced myself from bed, aching from the day before.

“In New York, I was working towards making the city a better place. Every waking moment was spent wiping criminal _scum_ off the streets,” you saw the muscles lining his jawline flex in anger for just a moment, and recoiled away. The blanket tugged at his neck as you moved, and he sighed. His face relaxed. “I have to work towards something now, and I think that thing has to be protecting you.”

You had no idea what to say. You weren’t keen to start an argument, knowing your discomfort would only elevate the chances of another fight starting between the pair of you.

“You can create a new home. Settle somewhere,” you told him gently, almost as if explaining the concept to a child.

He looked naïve as he turned to you with wide eyes, his lips slightly parted, and for a second you couldn’t imagine him doing anything else but kissing you.

“You can too,” he tried to comfort.

You suppressed a sigh, the moment of tension broken, your mind swimming with attraction and repulsion and _‘I’m hungry’._

Davos got to his feet, careful to settle the blanket around so you wouldn’t shiver, before heading into the cabin. He came back with his borrowed coat on and his boots in hand, sitting beside you to lace them.

“Going somewhere?”

“I’m looking for food. I haven’t tried heading past that river to the North.”

“It’s almost dark,” you frowned.

He looked at you with a fire you hadn’t seen since the days before his fight in the Sun Chamber with Danny – a determination and certainty in his own duty which had startled you then, and worried you now.

“I refuse to starve here.”

His parting words hung heavy in the air as he stood, shoving a worn plastic bag into the pocket of his coat before marching off into late afternoon. The light was already starting to take on an orange hue, and you knew the forest was dark at the best of times.

You wished he’d take the lantern, as clunky as it was, but instead it sat in its usual place on the table, its light dedicated to keeping you safe.

*

An hour later you flicked it on, bright white light filling your vision and harshening the shadows inside the cabin. Davos still hadn’t returned, and you had closed the door and drawn the thin curtains. You were still wrapped up against the cold, dragging the blanket with you as you tried to read a book, finally conceding it was too cold when your fingertips grew numb.

Lighting the log fire was frustrating, the wind slightly too strong, and in the long minutes it took you to nurture a healthy flame your frustration shifted towards Davos. Towards his pendulum-swing moods and his inconsistent honesty with you.

For a man with such strict adherence to his black-and-white morals, you’d always been surprised he wasn’t easier to read.

You hadn’t considered Davos enigmatic before his time in New York. In his home he had been honest, worn his heart on his sleeve no matter how often it was discouraged. He had spoken his mind and been naïve enough to believe every word he was told. You always felt a little guilty for how you and Danny had wound him up for that, abusing his trust just to joke around.

The riddles he’d spoken in then hadn’t obscured his meaning; they had only intensified it.

Now you struggled to follow his intent.

Staring into the fire, you tried to reconcile your feelings towards him. It was only natural, you supposed, to project _everything_ onto the only other human being you’d seen in months.

Stoking the fire only did so much to keep your mind occupied as you reread the same page of an age-worn novel over and over again. Shadows outside the windows made you shudder as the wind grew fiercer and fiercer, howling and whistling in the way it only did in ancient forests like this one.

Your hunger made you feel a little guilty as you sat inside, longing for a nice hot meal, while Davos was out in the rough weather trying to gather _something_ to eat. When a heavy rain began to fall, so aggressive you feared for the cabin’s windows, you began to fear the worst.

In your mind’s eye he’d slipped, he was laying semi-conscious on a muddy forest floor – doomed to die from hypothermia before sunrise. What if he’d been bitten by something? Attacked? What if he’d hurt himself, and he was out here, waiting on you as his only hope?

Hours ticked by, the night growing darker and the weather more vicious until all you could see out of the windows was your own haunting reflection, ghost-like in the electrical lantern-light.

The fire burned down to embers. You tossed one more log onto it before you climbed into bed, leaving Davos’ blanket over the covers, folded by your feet. It was too cold to go and put it back on the couch. You left the battery-powered lantern on for him, hoping he’d come back soon, somehow stumbling through the pitch black with just his torch, and be drawn in by the illuminated interior of the cabin. It would be worth wasting the batteries, to know he was back safe.

As hunger dragged you deep into a fitful, haunted sleep, you missed his presence. You worried for him. You knew going out into the storm to search wouldn’t help him – you would never find him in the dense forest, and he was a better tracker than you – and yet you felt so _guilty_ staying inside.

Finally, once the fire had completely turned to ash, you heard the cabin door swing open. The heavy stomp of boots and the discarding of sodden clothing, Davos’ laboured sigh, made you relax your tensed muscles as he stumbled inside.

Keeping the blankets up to your chin, desperate to hide from the cold, you turned to watch his silhouette as he closed the door carefully and looked around the cabin. He had the lantern lifted with one hand, and he startled a little as he realised you were awake.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” he whispered.

“No, you’re fine.”

Your words were a whisper too, though you were unsure who you were afraid of waking. But full volume felt like it would shatter the sanctity of this moment, the strange eye of the storm you found yourself in as your fears and worries about Davos were abated.

He was sodden, only his baggy t-shirt and boxers remaining as they hung off his body, and you felt a rush of worry as he shivered.

You couldn’t remember ever seeing him shiver.

“Sleep here,” you offered, shuffling aside in the bed as he approached.

His intent seemed to be to take his blanket back, and he finished the motion as if on autopilot while the lantern lit both of your faces at once. His dark eyes met yours, and you could see the weariness in them. He was as fearful as you were. Survival had always been a harsher fight for him than you, but even he was worn down by the hunger and the cold.

“I couldn’t find anything. I’m sorry…” he sighed, and you had the horrible feeling he’d take the couch simply to punish himself.

“That’s okay. I should’ve stopped you trying, I –”

“I can look after myself,” he snapped.

Maybe it was the late hour, but your shock and hurt played across your face so explicitly you might as well have recoiled in horror.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m tired, and _stupid_. _Weak_.”

He turned away, and you reached out a hand, shivering as freeing yourself from the blanket allowed the cool air of the cabin to rush against your skin. You snagged the blanket he was holding, stopping him in his tracks.

“I’ll let you sleep,” he muttered, trying to free himself.

“Come under the covers. You’ll freeze out there.”

“I’ve never… shared a bed.”

“It’s warmer,” you promised, hating that you couldn’t just let him be as cold as he wanted to be.

His hair was sodden, his body rigid and likely chilled to the bone.

“You’re no use to me if you freeze to death,” you teased half-heartedly.

With clumsy movements Davos slid under the covers. His blanket was stacked over yours, and you pulled it up to try and cover both of you. The bed felt an awful lot smaller with two bodies in, and you were surprised as Davos allowed his legs to lay close against yours. His bare skin was freezing in the places where it touched you, but you didn’t push him away as he defrosted.

His hair was wet, soaking his pillow as his head lay beside yours. He didn’t know where to put his hands, they lay across his stomach, and you mirror him awkwardly.

“Okay?” you asked, and he nodded.

Outside the storm seemed to grow more aggressive, rain and wind pounding against the cabin as if mother nature herself was desperate to rip you from your shelter. Tree branches snapping in the distance made you nervous, but you tried to ignore them.

Instead you focused on Davos, as he hugged his arms to his chest, still shivering.

It was strange to see him broken down, physically weak. Even with injuries he rarely allowed himself to be seen as vulnerable. You wondered how far he’d walked – how frustrated he’d gotten as he couldn’t find anything for the two of you to eat – pushing himself beyond what he knew was a sensible risk to take just for the sake of a few calories of energy.

Your hand sought his out as it was cradled against his chest, your fingers wrapping around his astonishingly cold palm, and he gripped your hand back. The lantern was left on his bedside table, and you leant over him to switch it off, plunging the room into darkness.

The noise of the storm seemed muted by the feeling of Davos’ hand in yours, his breath dancing across the back of your palm as his breathing grew slower and slower, scaring you with just how quickly he fell asleep.

Once you were content he was fine, his shivering ceasing and the blankets covering both of you up to your chins, sleep claimed you alongside him.

*

You paced the cabin in irritation the next morning.

You had woken alone, Davos’ side of the bed made neatly and the man himself dressed and back from his daily water-fetching ritual. He looked noticeably weaker than usual, suffering from a lack of food as much as you were.

Pain greeted you alongside the morning sun, and you couldn’t believe you were _missing_ the scavenged breakfasts of half-berries and half-junk food which Davos had been putting together just days ago.

Empty cupboards greeted you once again, and you felt your mood plummet as you dressed in silence.

Davos had been watching you with concern, fresh from another training session which had left his skin mottled with injuries he refused to acknowledge.

“I was thinking I’ll head further afield, whilst we have light. My search last night wasn’t successful, but –”

You cut him off with a stern glare as your head pounded from hunger, and you cursed yourself for not finding food sooner. The pair of you had sleepwalked into your pantry emptying, and now you’d fucking _starve_. After everything you and Davos had been through, you refused to give in to hunger.

“We have to leave,” you snapped, and Davos turned to stare at you as if you were mad, “just… to get supplies. I’ve still got money.”

“It’s dangerous,” he sighed, and you knew he was replaying an imagined argument which had already taken place over and over inside his head.

There was a debate inside your own mind which you suspected looked very similar.

“Just quickly. We go somewhere rural, pay cash, and we fill the car with gas. We come back here and we… I don’t know, survive the next few months!”

He shook his head silently, turning away from you, and you wanted to _scream_ at him.

“We’ll starve, Davos. To _death_.”

If one of you didn’t kill the other first.

Both of you were suffering from the lack of food, rash decisions and harsh words becoming more frequent with every meal you missed.

He ignored you still, seemingly refusing to pull his head out of the sand, even as your situation grew more and more dire.

Davos walked to the trunk at the end of the bed, and you felt a jolt of… _something_ at the realisation he’d woken up beside your sleeping body that morning. He pulled out a towel, letting the heavy wooden lid slam shut like he knew you hated.

“I am going to bathe at the lake. Do you want to come?”

The thought of that dark water, the fear and shock each time you jumped in, the shivering walk back to the cabin with a coat clinging to your bare skin, it made you snap. Your stomach growled.

“I’m sick of this, Davos. This… life. I want to go to a fucking store, buy some _real food,_ for once. I want a shower.”

He looked dejected, and for a moment you stopped your pacing. But the sight of yourself in the mirror, the thought of jumping into that ice-cold lake, of going to bed again hungry, reignited your frustration.

“Aren’t you losing your mind?” you challenged, “Even you’re losing muscle. I am _constantly_ hungry, and I’m sure I’m getting sick. This is no way to live.”

From the way Davos’ head hung, you could tell there was a flicker of the same irritations buried deep within him.

Davos was never one to admit when he was defeated. But he couldn’t fight his way out of starvation.

“I’ll meet you at the car,” he conceded.

*

The trip back down the mountain track was as treacherous as the journey up, but shortened somewhat by the knowledge of what lay ahead – and the fact it was light outside. Both of you meticulously repeated mile markers and directions back to one another, needing to know the way back, as your phone charged in the centre console for the first time in months.

It all felt strange.

Traffic, roads, people.

Being back in this car with Davos, somehow both changed people since you had both driven to the cabin.

You found a town quickly, one which seemed big enough to offer you both anonymity and supplies, panicking about drawing attention to yourselves as you trawled the roads strangely until you spotted a massive grocery store.

Parking at the back of the lot, you could see Davos was overwhelmed. You gave him a moment, turning the engine off and just sitting for a second, until he made the first move to swing his door open.

You tried to contain your excitement as you followed him into the chilled store.

The pair of you must look a state. In need of a shower, a hairbrush, and some clothes which weren’t from the 80s. But you both fetched a cart nonetheless, Davos trailing after you with barely-concealed distain for the packaged food and the loudly chattering customers around him.

It was hard to remember the limitations of your cabin, the lack of refrigeration and the long shelf-life everything needed, as you started to choose food.

 _Real_ food.

It was a fight not to eat right there in the store, surrounded by customers who were already staring and suspicious store employees, as you remembered exactly why people didn’t shop while they were hungry.

You stuck to vegetarian options, for Davos’ sake, picking up half a dozen of just about _everything_ you could. All plans to be subtle, to maybe visit multiple stores, were forgotten as you were just so grateful to not be finding sustenance in the inhospitable autumn-winter cusp. Here, it was as simple as moving aisle to aisle.

You picked up everything – tea, bottled water, chips and fresh veg. Cans and packets and bottles, anything you thought would last.

Davos would occasionally wander off, struggling to _quite_ understand the novel physics of pushing a shopping cart, returning with more bread or fresh vegetables. You suspected he was just trying to be helpful without outright admitting he was confused.

You bought everything you’d been missing over the last few weeks as your supplies dwindled: batteries, pens, matches, disposable lighters and firelighters. As Davos turned a corner, you snuck candy and toiletry products and wine into the cart – hoping he would ascribe the packaging to _just another thing he didn’t care to understand._

With your cart filled with essentials, you swapped to fill his too, leaving Davos to trail after you as you excitedly planned meals. To his credit, Davos insisted on simple carbs – including a restaurant sized bag of rice and another of pasta – to make sure you could actually survive.

A small mountain of food later, you guided him to the checkout. An uninterested teenager huffed at the sight of your two overfilled carts, and you were grateful for his silence as he scanned each item. You didn’t want to answer questions.

Finally the bags were packed and Davos stood protectively behind you as your anxiety grew over the mounting number on the screen in front of you.

It was more than the cash you had. You handed over the notes, letting the cashier count them, seeing the number left as he asked you in a bored monotone: “Card, for the rest?”

You held your breath as you dug your card out from your purse and used it, hoping against hope it would still work. The card machine took its time, pending, pending, _pending._

Suddenly, the receipt printed. Davos visibly relaxed behind you as the purchase went through, shifting on his feet and hauling the last heavy bags back into the cart.

With a _thank you_ muttered to the cashier you took your card, praying it wasn’t being tracked, and led Davos from the store.

You hadn’t seen people in so long that even the experience of walking through the parking lot was overwhelming. There were more people milling around than when you’d entered, children and elderly people meandering around and making your path back to the Chevvy swerve as you avoided colliding with anyone.

Your stress was mounting as more and more people glanced at the pair of you. You could tell the man beside you felt the same, and you hurried back to your car with your heads tilted down. You unlocked the vehicle quickly, opening the trunk so Davos could load the bags in. His unfitted shirt rode up as he moved, revealing his midriff, and you bit your tongue to avoid making a comment. His insistence he was losing huge amounts of muscle mass was clearly _unfounded_. You looked away, determined not to stare at the ‘V’ of his hips. In the reflection of the windows you noticed a pair of young women watching him, wide eyed at the flex of his biceps as he effortlessly lifted the bags into the trunk, and you smiled at their quiet giggles.

Davos glared at them, clearly suspicious, and they hurried on across the lot. As he rounded the car to open the door for you, you raised your eyebrows at him.

“You’ve got some admirers,” you told him, smirking.

He grunted.

“We need to get back to safety.”

Davos watched the mirrors as you drove, eyes narrowed as he carefully scoured your surroundings for threats. You tried not to be unnerved by his constant suspicion, how he directed you away from busy areas and cameras and police cars, obeying him if only to avoid argument.

The journey back took twice as long as it should have, filled with him wringing his hands, turning down the radio whenever you cranked the volume. His paranoia was suspicious in itself, and it reminded you how you’d felt those first days after his escape. He’d been your rock then. You could be his now.

As you pulled off the road and into a gas station forecourt, you could tell he wanted to protest.

“Wait here,” you instructed firmly.

You had to be the voice of reason. You stopped to refill the fuel tank and left him in the car, reminding him of the cameras watching the forecourt, and he slid on your sunglasses. Davos must not have even breathed until you returned, stock-still in the front of the car, watching you move to speak to the cashier and pay for the tank of fuel.

He opened the door for you from the inside of the car, leaning across the driver’s seat, as you returned. He breathed a sigh of relief as the engine turned over.

“Alright?”

Davos nodded tensely. So tensely, you thought he’d seen something. Ambulance sirens echoed in the distance, and he flinched, mistaking the sound for police cars on the hunt. You reached out for him, and to your surprise he took your hand in his.

Prison must still feel a very recent memory for him, you realised. A traumatic one, at that. What must it had been like for him, surrounded by those he thought to be degenerates and forces for evil, questioned over and over by police and various other law enforcement bodies?

From the way he gripped your hand until you told him you needed it to drive, he feared going back more than anything.

Leaving the town was easier than arriving, your memory of the route surprisingly accurate. As you turned from the main road Davos’ wariness reminded you of his suspicion when you had first found the cabin. He watched every vehicle which passed, and you almost regretted taking him to the store. It had kicked his paranoia back into overdrive.

He seemed irritated as, a few miles up the mountain track, you cut the engine to eat.

“We’ve easily got another hour before daylight runs out,” you tried to soothe him, “and I’m starving. I’m sure you are too.”

He split bread with you without complaint, eating and sipping at a bottle of water until both of you felt thoroughly _better_. With your headache and hunger pains alleviated, you continued on the winding road.

Your Chevvy drove unprotestingly back into its parking spot as you finally found the cabin again, having only taken a couple of accidental wrong turns.

You were glad to be done driving, feeling exhausted after the car had sat idle for so long.

Davos still hadn’t relaxed.

He refused your help as he hauled the groceries back to the cabin. You had bought cans and jars weighing more than you could lift, wanting to live in as much luxury as you could until you formulated a plan, and you winced at the way the grocery bags were strained under the bulk of their load. Davos didn’t hesitate, leading you on the short walk from the road to the cabin, insisting he could carry everything alone even as sweat broke on his brow.

You couldn’t help wondering if that’s how he saw every aspect of his life.

His own burden to bear, unaided.

“Stay here,” he hissed to you, adopting a protective stance the second you stepped on to the porch, “I’ll check the building.”

The bags were placed at your feet as he stole into the tiny building, hands raised defensively, and you rolled your eyes. There would be no one here.

With both hands you hauled up the bag nearest to you, pulling it inside to begin unpacking. You caught sight of Davos as he kicked open the bathroom door. He shot you a glare before checking the room, clearly finding everything undisturbed.

“Clear,” he announced, as if you weren’t already finding a home for cans of chickpeas and green beans in the kitchen cupboards.

“Thank goodness,” you grumbled sarcastically.

His overprotectiveness was getting on your nerves. It was newly renewed since that morning, and you wished he could see how unnecessary it was.

His scaring you, sharing a bed, him opening up… it had all come in such quick succession you couldn’t imagine the turmoil inside his head. Moreover, you finally understood the overprotectiveness. That he cared for you so much it made both of you afraid.

“Hey,” he caught your attention.

You looked up, finding him closer than you’d expected, dumping down the rest of the food onto the countertop.

“I’m just trying to keep us safe.”

For a moment you felt bad. You could see the genuine insecurity in his eyes, from the way he ran his hand over his head. His hair and beard were growing out now longer than he liked now. He’d been keen to pick up a razor at the store, his insistence he could live off the land clearly not extending to haircare.

“I know. I’m just… tired.”

“It’s been a long day,” he agreed, starting to sort through what you’d bought. He refused to handle anything which didn’t suit his diet, leaving it in the bags for you. Without refrigeration, there were a few things you’d have to eat soon. Those things were gathered on the countertop.

“Not like that,” you explained, “I mean… I’m tired of living like this. It’s not what I’m used to.”

 _But I know you’re trying your best for us,_ you longed to add. But didn’t.

Davos remained stony-faced and silent as he made quick work of stocking the cupboards, and you found yourself doing the same. You’d bought bath products, hoping the tub in the bathroom might hold water and that you could convince Davos to help you heat enough water for a bath. God, you wanted a bath.

He began to apologise, but you didn’t want to hear it. You had bought floss and a new toothbrush, and you intended to lock yourself in the bathroom and enjoy finally feeling as though your teeth were clean. Even if it was using lake water and a cracked mirror.

The bottle of wine you placed on the counter drew Davos’ eye, caused him to raise an eyebrow, and you smiled back at him.

“Fuck, I’ve missed wine,” you confessed.

With everything put away, mostly, Davos set a glass out for you and began to make a meal. You lit the fire before joining him in the kitchen.

It felt domestic, civilised, to watch Davos cook. He had surprising skill in the kitchen, rusty but still good, tasting the food and seeming to revel in ingredients he was more familiar with.

You didn’t know what half of what he’d bought even _was_ , trusting that he’d make use of it when he wordlessly dropped it into the cart. Him offering a glass surprised you, even more so when he wordlessly slid the bottle of wine across to you, and you noticed his strange smile as you cracked the bottle open.

It almost felt safe, comfortable, for a moment. You could be husband and wife, having a quiet night in, sipping at wine and watching the movement of his shoulders as he chopped, stealing pieces of veg off his cutting board.

 _Dangerous thinking_ , the sober voice in your head chided.

He’d ditched his sweat-stained shirt as the fire blazed hot, and you felt guilty for staring at his torso. Whenever he turned away you could see the tattoo running down his spine, how it moved with those gorgeous back muscles as he tensed and untensed. You could see his scars too.

The alcohol made you bold enough to ask about them, your head fuzzy quickly after many years without booze.

“What’s that one?” you demanded as he twisted to cut bread.

“Hm?”

You pointed to a raised line on the outside of his bicep, and he craned his neck to look at the scar before shrugging.

“Looks like a straight blade. A throwing knife, probably.”

“Probably? You don’t… remember?”

If it wasn’t so all bleak, you’d be laughing at him.

“I only remember what I need to do to improve for next time. The weapon itself doesn’t matter.”

“Fucking hell.”

You couldn’t help huffing at him, and he smirked at the roll of your eyes, at the hefty next sip of red wine you took from your glass. 

Finally he finished preparing veg and wiped his hands clean. After wandering to the clothes trunk to grab a new shirt he took the pot outside, setting a fire, and you followed him out there. Barefoot on the porch you allowed yourself to watch him for a bit longer as he fumbled with the new lighters you had bought, carefully nursing a handful of burning kindling into a full fire.

The pit you had been using to cook outside was a burden, but also necessary. Neither of had been able to get the stove to light, it had likely run out of gas decades ago, but there was something oddly charming about open fire cooking. It was familiar to Davos. He sat on the ground beside the roaring flames, setting the lid on the pot as the contents heated.

“I was thinking,” he called to you suddenly, “I should train you.”

You pressed your glass of wine to your face, frowning from the porch.

“Really?”

“For your own protection.”

You snorted.

“I think you might accidentally kill me.”

Davos went silent, staring down at his feet, and you realised with a jolt what he was thinking. _He had hurt you_. He was afraid he _would_ hurt you.

“It was just an idea,” he dismissed softly, all hope drained from his voice as it caught in his throat.

You didn’t know how to articulate the thoughts floating around your head, the trust you had for him, the forgiveness which you’d offered him a long time ago, and he had rejected. It lived in the same place as your fear of him. Certainly the alcohol wasn’t helping your desire to express those thoughts.

“No, its… if you think…”

Stumbling over your words, you set your wine down. You hated seeing him alone, looking down from your spot on the porch while he sat the felled log outside. He looked so… solitary. A world away.

You winced at the feeling of the forest floor beneath your bare feet, caring more about reaching him than the mud and sticks which dug into your soles. Davos moved like he intended to stop you, but you reached him anyway, depositing yourself down right beside him.

“I didn’t mean seriously, I just thought it might be helpful. Forget I asked.” He told you, staring into the flames.

“I’d like to, but you train so hard, I don’t think I could keep up.”

Davos shrugged in response.

You thought back to his ritualistic walks to the lake, how you’d interrupted his ‘training’ one morning and caused this incurable shift between the two of you. You couldn’t risk that happening again. One kick too strong, and he would never forgive himself. You would never forgive him. Vivid images spring to mind of his spilt blood which made you wince as he punched open his knuckles, again, again, again.

He’d told you once that himself and Danny threw such strong punches because their fingers were broken, over and over, tiny agonising wounds healing, over and over, until their bones were strong.

You reached for his hand, surprised when he let you take it, pull it into your lap.

“I worry, is all,” he choked out.

You blamed the smoke, feeling it blustering towards your face as the wind changed direction.

“I’ve got you here, there’s hardly any point me in learning,” you teased, taking a moment to look down at his knuckles.

They were healed, for once, unwrapped and the skin unbroken. You felt a little surge to happiness at knowing he wasn’t in pain. You swore you wouldn’t let him train them to bleeding again. His fingers didn’t seem visibly broken from their past trauma, but you knew those tiny injuries were deceptive.

“I might not be enough,” he worried aloud.

You shook your head, but you didn’t know if he saw. Only that you alone couldn’t convince him that he was _enough_. He had to learn that himself.

The pair of you sat there until the food was deemed ‘ready’ by Davos, and you watched him use an old shirt as a failing heat-proof glove and wondering how the hell he didn’t drop the pot when it inevitably burned him.

You extinguished the fire while Davos plated up, taking a moment to watch him in the kitchen through the cabin windows as the embers of the fire crackled and hissed, a column of steam rising from the fire pit. He would always double check that it was fully out before you went to bed, doing a lap of the cabin even in the pitch black, freezing nights.

He was a protector. It was part of him. The core of him. No matter what he opted to protect, it would be well guarded. You felt an odd tenseness in the pit of your stomach at the idea he’d chosen you. Chosen to sleep between you and the door, chosen to offer himself as a mattress in the freezing car, chosen to fetch water and gather food every day. 

Now he was cooking for you, silent and deliberate in how he balanced flavours and nutrients. He tasted the soup, and you couldn’t help staring as he brought an age-worn wooden spoon to his lips, raising his eyebrow in what you assumed was approval.

With a jolt you broke your stare, seeing him look out the window for you. Being without running water suddenly seemed worth it, to be with him. You regretted how you had fought lately, as you caught yourself admiring him.

You wanted to be with him differently, you realised. You wanted _more_. You had always wanted more. The wind made you shiver as you supervised the dying fire a little longer, remembering shivering hidden by the wall of the monastery, waiting to meet the two of them once their training adjourned for the day. It had always felt distinctly like hanging outside the gates of another school, waiting to see your friends.

Danny had always been a flirt, you remembered. You’d found that fun. The harsh teachings at K’un-Lun struggled to quench his teenage-boy desperation, even when you’d met him as an adult. You longed to have had a longer conversation with Colleen, perhaps a less hostile one, to try and suss out what navigating a relationship with someone raised with the law of The Order of the Crane Mother was like. She’d have a universe of wisdom for you, and you had a million questions in exchange. You resolved to call her, when you could.

The thought of that tense afternoon spent in Colleen’s kitchen made your head spin, and you wondered if your presence in a nearby town had made any ripples. Surely the fuss had died down by now? No more hunting, phone tapping. The world had better things to do than fret about a misled Kung Fu expert, and the stupid journalist who’d broken him out of jail.

Collen would know what the media was saying, what you could do to get your life back. She might even understand how you felt about the man waving you in through the thin cabin windows, a frown on his face as you took a moment to yourself.

The fire was long out, now cooling, but you gave it another splash of washing-up water for good measure. It gave you a second to collect yourself, taking a deep breath and leaving the bucket outside, as you saw Davos looking for you again.

*

When the food was done, Davos looked proud of himself. It was good. Really good. A soup packed with as many vegetables as he could get away with and a sparse serving of the bread he had picked up in the grocery store. As he wolfed his portion down, you saw him going back for seconds. The food was the best thing you’d eaten in months.

When you told him so, and he acted more bashful than you’d ever seen.

“It really is amazing! I had no idea you could cook so well!” you enthused.

“It’s balanced. And energy-dense. I wish I could have cooked like this every night, but I couldn’t find – ”

“Obviously.”

You cut him off before he could somehow blame himself for the lack of diversity of wild edible plants growing in this particular part of North America.

You sipped at your wine, raising an eyebrow in challenge when he looked like he might be about to argue. For a cheap bottle, it was going down surprisingly easy. When you stood for a refill you found the ground a little more unsteady than when you had first sat down, a warmth spreading through your chest and your cheeks from the alcohol. You were struck by an idea.

“Do you want any wine?” you offered.

“No.”

His reply was so abrupt you silenced yourself, not even daring to joke. _Probably a K’un-Lun thing_. Perhaps your drinking bothered him. You didn’t care much, too glad for some small luxury.

You topped up your glass and brought him water.

Settling back on the sofa beside him, you noticed him eyeing your drink.

“Actually, could I try some?”

“Sure!”

You had planned to pour him a cup when he took yours from your hand, taking cautious sip and then a mouthful from the spot where your lips had been. He had certainly never drunk alcohol before, you noted, his gulp draining about a quarter of the glass.

His face screwed up at the taste, and he handed it back to you wordlessly.

“Not good?” you prompted.

“Not good.”

You could see a drop of red painting his lower lip, his tongue darting out to catch it as it dripped down towards his chin.

“I don’t understand how you can drink this.”

“Feels nice,” you shrugged, suddenly embarrassed under his scrutiny.

“It poisons your body.”

He was looking at you with sincere worry, but you found yourself smiling.

“It makes you _drunk_.”

“Which feels nice?”

“Sure does!”

 _Or melancholic_ , you mused, watching him. Perhaps he thought less of you now. He sipped his water to get the taste from his mouth, still watching you with an intense curiosity you could barely function under.

It was a full hour later you found yourself sat on the floor, passing a single wine glass back and forth to Davos, taking hefty swings of it yourself.

Barely half a bottle deep, neither of you could walk well enough to return your plates to the kitchen.

“Fucking hell! What’s happened to me? We haven’t drunk anything!” you joked.

“I feel… weird. We have definitely drunk something.”

You couldn’t help giggling at his sincere confusion.

“No, I mean I normally have a much higher tolerance than this. I haven’t had a chance to drink for years, though. Guess it’s gone.”

“I’m sorry you’re stuck here with me.”

His tone was abrupt, and you could see his eyes swimming with sudden tears.

You shushed him.

“No! I volunteered, I… I want to be. Here for you. I have nowhere else, now.”

It had been inevitable since the first airing of your name alongside his, months ago on your car radio. You were in this for the long haul.

“The fault for this still falls on my shoulders.”

“Eh.”

You didn’t care much anymore, letting him finish the glass of wine and lolling your head back on the sofa. It was inevitable, that you would end up this drunk. Davos had surprised you though.

Firstly that he would even drink, and then that he had gotten drunk. He was so much more emotive. Caring. _Sad._

This would end badly, and yet it was too much fun to resist.

Your strange unresolved arguments no longer seemed to hang as tense in the air, the couch just becoming a _couch_ , after so many weeks of it being a battle ground and a therapy venue and an uncomfortable bed which only symbolised the distance between you.

Now, it was just a couch.

A place for the two of you to hang out and chat shit and bond as the barriers in your minds were lowered by the wine. Even the intimacy of sharing one glass was a step beyond the day to day.

The glass was emptied and refilled, the curtains remaining open for longer than seemed sensible as the cool of late night seeped inside, the two of you side by side and watching shapes move in the eerie sway of trees.

A bird called outside, echoing and creepy. You startled and curled up, and Davos chuckled and threw a lazy arm around you, pulling you close into his side as though the warmth of his body would be enough to settle you.

With a warm feeling deep in the pit of your stomach, you found yourself dully embarrassed to realise it was.

Emboldened by your drunkenness to the point you didn’t even think about it, you fidgeted to rest your head against his chest. You could hear the rumble of his voice against your ear as he suddenly spoke.

“When K’un-Lun was gone, I looked for you. Paid someone to try and find you, and they couldn’t…”

“I left on foot,” you explained, “then took my time trying to find you.”

“It… did something to me. Losing it. The grief of my parents, my home… you. I’m not proud of who I became.”

You hummed. You’d read the news reports. Had tense words with Colleen. It didn’t excuse him, but you understood why he did what he did. How his upbringing had shaped him into a man who couldn’t stand by whilst perceived wrongs happened before his very eyes.

“No one ever made me question my teachings, before you,” he confessed.

“I’m flattered.”

You felt warm, sleepy, the alcohol hitting you hard after so long with nothing for sustenance but water and what you could forage.

Davos chuckled in response, the most carefree you’d heard him since your roadtrip ended, resting his head back against the couch. His chest moved under you, and his hand steadied your back, stopping you from shifting anyway as your reaction times slowed to a crawl from the wine.

“I always thought it was funny that Danny fancied me, in K’un-Lun.”

You were so close to Davos you couldn’t see him, even as you felt your entire torso pressed to his, the shift of his muscles beneath your face as he reached up to scratch his beard.

“Yeah?” he asked, the noise in this throat, rumbling through his chest rather than disrupting the cool air around you.

“He had no idea how to show it. And it was banned. I’m convinced he only flirted with me because it was another way to break the rules.”

Davos grimaced.

“I always feared he would… give into temptation.”

With a small smile, you rolled your head a little to face Davos, feeling a slight hitch in the steady rise and fall of his chest against your cheek.

“I never felt anything for him.”

You weren’t quite sure why you felt the need to state it so plainly.

You also weren’t sure why stressed the last word, shuffling against Davos as you said it.

You laid a hand on his chest, the muscle forgiving as you used his body to push yourself to sitting, your chest still pressed soft against him. You wondered if he was as conscious of the touch as you were, his heart quickening as yours was.

He licked his bottom lip nervously, pressing his mouth closed before parting his lips, a soft exhale escaping him. His breath smelt of wine, and you moved one hand to gently trace his cheekbones, feeling the shape of them under his beard.

The beard was unruly, and you knew he made some attempt to smooth it each morning with wet hands in the cracked bathroom mirror. It was surprisingly soft under your fingers and he closed his eyes as you dragged your fingertips softly across his jaw. Your other hand was still trapped between your bodies.

For a second, it felt as though you were going to kiss, your faces inches apart as you stilled your hand over his face and his eyes fluttered open.

He pressed his lips gently to your hand, experimentally, his voice deep and affecting you to your very core as he spoke.

“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I am lost, and I’m taking it out on you, and I’m sorry for that.”

You shrugged, and he continued.

“I’m sure what I feel, what this is… I shouldn’t do it.”

“Who’s stopping you?” you asked.

He shook his head.

“That is the root of my the problem. There’s no one stopping me.”

As you met his eyes and he met yours, you felt all the air leave your lungs.

You forgot about everything. The stupid cabin floors which threatened to break under your feet one day, Davos’ ridiculous training regime, the scars on his hands which he refused to let heal. You forgot about the fact he had pulled you from your regular life, the menacing threat that he might accidentally harm you.

Deep down, you knew he would die before he let himself hurt you again. He would sooner lose a hand than lay a strike against you.

“Well what do you want?” you muttered, trying to stifle the hope and the flirting in your tone.

“I want…”

He trailed off, eyes closing. The wine made his limbs loose, his neck floppy. You didn’t associate clumsiness with Davos, yet seeing him so bereft of his usual coordination you realised he was as useless drunk as any teenager sneaking their sips bottles of vodka to a park with friends.

“I know I’m hard to live with. I know I’m intense, and I’m trying. I really am. I just –”

“You’re the only reason I survived out here, Davos,” you confessed, feeling his fingers brush against your cheekbone as you spoke.

“You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me…”

“Knowing you’re okay is enough for me to be here. That… that makes it worth it.”

As his gaze turned to you it was so intense you almost shivered away, the open awe in his eyes as he took you in chipping painful cracks into your heart.

“That… that is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Ever done for me.”

His words came out slurred and jumbled, but they still hit you like a punch.

You curled up again, giving Davos space to drape his arm around you. He hugged you fully, tight and sloppy at the same time, his hands colliding with your back as he pulled you close. It was awkward and unpractised, and you suspected it would’ve been just as unnatural to him without the alcohol.

You didn’t have space to wrap your arms around his back, he was pressed against the couch, so you settled for both palms against his ribs. His beard brushed your cheek as he held you for a moment.

Even when his bear hug loosened, you stayed a few moments longer.

As he pressed one hand to his face, rubbing the hot skin as the alcohol made him drowsy, you cleared your throat to speak.

“You said you sent someone out to try and find me, but… I almost lost you too, remember? Hearing that fight was one of the worst experiences of my life,” you confessed, recalling the day.

You hadn’t been allowed inside, instead joining the curious souls listening outside, hearing the grunts and crunches of your friends’ bodies. You had no horse in the race, back then, simply there as a guest and a spectator and a friend, feeling some journalistic duty to record the outcome in that damned chamber.

Both fighters had left in a pretty poor state, but Davos couldn’t even walk unsupported, his loss so much more than physical. You had rushed to him, and been quickly and harshly pushed away by his mother. She’d always hated you.

Now, knowing Davos’ telling of the story, it seemed so much worse. Danny had cheated, he’d said.

“I would have died before I yielded. I was ready to.”

You shook your head.

“No fight is worth dying for. Not even that one.”

He rolled his head forwards, finally breaking the spell between you as your bodies were peeled apart by his movement. You missed his warmth as you sat up straighter, leaning against the front of the couch.

“Plenty of students die more gruesomely for less. Infections, freak accidents, training fights which go on too long. I could have been one of them. I _should_ have taken the blows until I was well and truly beaten. Fairly.”

You noted the lack of conviction in his words. They sounded almost… mechanical. A mantra escaping his head. For the first time, when he spoke about the Iron Fist, he sounded as though he didn’t believe himself.

You reached for his hand.

“I’m glad you didn’t.”

He turned to looked at you, expression hurt, and you found yourself absently reaching to cup his face.

“I’m glad you’re still here, I mean.”

“It was my everything. And they chose an outsider. The Fist meant nothing to him.”

Staying quiet, you wondered how the conversation had been derailed so fast.

He joined your silence for a second before abruptly standing, making you cry out as he disrupted your balance. If your glass hadn’t been empty, he would’ve spilled the wine from it.

“I need to pee,” he grunted, grabbing a coat before heading out into the cold outside.

You just hummed as he left, shivering at the gust of cold air which entered the cabin for a split second.

Placing the wine glass down to lay down flat on the couch, wondering how the hell Davos slept on this thing night after night.

A diversion from that grisly conversation was welcome, your brain drifting with the weight of the discussion. The flattened cushions were uncomfortable underneath you, and you tried not to think on how long it had been since they had been washed.

If ever.

When he came back in he took one glance at your body taking up the whole space, and sat himself on the floor by your legs before you’d even had the thought to move. His head flopped back onto the cushion beside your waist.

“We really should swap beds. It can’t do you any good to sleep on this,” you suggested, trying to bounce a little and wincing as a hard part of the wooden frame hit your tailbone.

He laughed, and you didn’t like it. Hollow and bitter.

“I find it nicer than anything I have slept on before. Except maybe at Joy’s, once. Or the prison bed. That was alright.”

With a groan, you rolled to face him, surprised to find your face inches from his. He’d turned where he sat on the floor, one arm resting alongside your body.

“Let me guess. Sleeping on _beds_ doesn’t build character, so you slept on concrete or some shit.”

“Reed matts, sometimes.”

“We’d call that child abuse here, you know.”

He rested his head back against the couch, closing his eyes and sighing. You knew sober, he’d be defending his upbringing, what they did to him at the monastery.

Everything came back to the Iron Fist somehow, whether or not he had been worthy and suffered enough for it, and you didn’t know how to move past it.

“Sleep in the bed tonight,” you told him.

It was an instruction, even as you cringed at the discomfort of this broken old couch. You could make do for a few nights. He certainly did enough for you to make your waking hours easier.

“I couldn’t be comfortable knowing you weren’t,” he grumbled, his sweetness making your heart swell even through his disgruntled tone.

“I feel bad, though.”

“Don’t. I insist.”

“Davos!” you whined, and he rolled his head to the side with a smirk.

He called your name back with equal mocking, and you lightly kicked at his feet and missed.

“Let’s both sleep on the couch. And both feel guilty about it.”

He huffed, a deep laugh emanating from his chest, as he made a great show of standing up. For his first time being drunk, he wasn’t doing too badly. You were impressed he hadn’t fallen over. Perhaps he had when he was outside, judging by the mud stains on his knees.

“Nope,” he declared, looming over you.

You curled your body up instinctively, unsure what was planning. Suddenly he bent down and scooped you up, letting out a huff as he awkwardly lifted you from the sofa. You made a brief startled noise, reaching out to cling onto him in fear he might drop you. With you wrapping yourself around him like a koala he found it easier to walk, swaying less with your weight as he walked you over to the bed.

Realising what was happening, you refused to let go of him.

“Down,” he grunted, the instruction so gruff and dominating it made you shudder.

You shook your head petulantly, biting back a grin as he stood which his knees to the edge of the mattress, waiting to deposit you onto it.

“No,” you argued. “we’ve gotta swap for _one night_.”

With a firm shake of his head, Davos tried to detangle himself from your limbs again. It didn’t work.

Instead he dropped down to the bed, flopping against it fully clothed.

“Davos! Not your pants! There’s mud on them.”

The sleepiness had finally reached a peak. Clumsily, half on and half off the bed, he kicked the khaki pants off. You were pinned underneath him, sneaking free as he wrestled with the fabric.

Before you knew it, Davos was beneath the covers you usually slept under.

You staggered to the couch, the man seemingly beyond the point of noticing he’d lost your little tiff as you unfolded his blanket and tried to get comfortable in the divot he’d left in the couch cushions.

Flicking the switch on your lantern to off, you heard Davos’ voice seep through the darkness.

“What do I do now?”

“Enjoy yourself.”

Davos didn’t react to your words, staring up at the cabin ceiling as though he could see the expanse of the star-dotted night sky beyond it. If any more of beams rotted and gave way under the mountain of fallen branches on the roof, he probably would be able to watch the constellations outside.

Davos grunted.

“This… being drunk. I don’t _like_ it.”

“Sleep it off,” you called back to him.

Within minutes, perhaps inadvertently, he was taking your instructions. You groaned and pulled a cushion over your head as, for the first time since you’d arrived, Davos snored.

Despite the noise it took minutes for you to follow him into sleep, curled up awkwardly to try and find comfort on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you're enjoying this fic! I think there'll be about 3 more chapters - comments are so, so appreciated if you're enjoying it!


	7. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a night of drinking, Davos copes remarkably well with his first hangover-bear-fear combo.

When you woke up it was with a groan, rolling your shoulders and feeling a second of panic as you adjusted to a different orientation inside the cabin. Fucking hell, the couch was awful.

Guilt at how much he’d told you the night before ate away at you, and you wished you couldn’t remember it all quite so clearly. He hadn’t shared that much the whole time you’d known each other, and you’d pushed his morals, gotten him drunk and asked too many _questions_.

When you checked the cabin for him you realised he was outside, meditating. In the shade. Perhaps he couldn’t face the sunlight today either.

There was no fresh water on the side, but yesterday’s would do fine. You made the pair of you cold tea, carrying it to the porch and sitting outside to wait until he was done.

“How ‘you feeling?” you smiled as he finally approached, keeping your voice gentle.

He blinked in surprise, eyes not fully open as the morning sun felt especially bright. You thought back to your younger years, your first time getting drunk. You could cut Davos some slack for being a grumpy, hungover lightweight.

“Like shit.”

With a smile you handed over the tea. He took it gratefully, sitting a few feet from you, watching treeline in parallel to you.

“I can see why people drink,” he admitted quietly, “though I doubt I’ll do it again. I feel hazy, and my mouth’s dry. But it was fun.”

With a wry smile, you nodded. You were surprised at that he’d enjoyed it at all, in truth. But you’d liked seeing a looser, more honest Davos.

“Yeah, it was.”

“I was quite unimpressed you took the couch. It won’t happen again.”

A shiver threatened to course down your body at the firmness in his voice, almost _telling you off._ In the early morning light you shot him a cheeky look, seeing him match it in an eyebrow-raised challenge. You’d take that gauntlet, your aching back already reminding you never to let him sleep uncomfortably again.

The two of you could share the bed like grownups. You’d tell him that later – when he didn’t have the whole day to plan arguments in response.

A bird sang outside, before abruptly stopping with a rustle, and the two of you listened in silence. After a moment the singing began again.

“Do you ever wonder who owns this place?” you asked suddenly, not sure where the thought had come from.

A recent anxiety, you supposed, the threat of snowfall made you nervous someone would come for a holiday. There was no security, no maintenance, so it seemed unlikely. No one had come knocking, but the worry still wandered into your mind from time to time.

“I assumed it was abandoned,” Davos told you simply, sipping at his cup.

“People keep places like these for holidays, visit them once or twice a year. It must be belong to _someone_.”

“Maybe they died.”

“Davos!”

He shook his head, chuckling at your outrage. He seemed to have perked up, too swept up in your company to focus on his hangover. You rolled your eyes, turning to inspect the cabin.

“I wondered about doing it up, if we’re staying here a while. Making it warmer. More waterproof.”

It was a thought which had drifted through your mind idly, nothing more than a leaf in the stream of your consciousness, but Davos turned to look at you suddenly.

“I was serious, yesterday. I’m not letting you stay here forever,” he looked down into his cup for a second, before continuing. “We can’t stay here forever. What life is this?”

“We’re fugitives.”

“ _I_ am a fugitive,” he corrected tersely.

You hummed noncommittally, letting yourself be washed away with your thoughts.

For too long, the pair of you just stood there, nursing mild hangovers and taking in the morning. The conversations, the touches, the almost-kiss from the night before… it all still sat unprocessed in your brain. Like papers littering the in-tray of your mind, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to start working through everything yet.

But his chest under yours was still fresh in your memory, you felt cold without his body under yours. You could still see his deep brown eyes, almost black in the light of a single lantern and made dazed by drunkenness, gazing into yours. You could still so clearly remember the scent of wine on his lips as his breath danced hot across your face, and feeling _so sure_ he was going to kiss you.

“We need water,” he declared suddenly, moving from the window.

“I’ll come with you.”

He regarded you for a second, before throwing you your shoes as he grabbed his own.

“If you’d like to.”

It was part of his training, he explained on the walk to the lake, to carry full buckets of water across K’un-Lun’s steep, dangerous mountain paths without spilling a drop.

The path to the lake from the cabin wasn’t pleasant, nor was it too horrific. You had walked it a number of times to wash. It was brutally uphill on the way back, with the occasional perilous section, but in total the walk was only half an hour.

You could manage it, and you wanted to help, at least for today.

The water tended to be clear and fresh even by the side of the lake, and once you had filled the buckets you dunked your head in, washing the grime and hangover from your body. Your hair dripped wet as you returned to Davos’ side, wondering if he might do the same.

His face as set, emotionless, as he waited for you.

“Okay?” he checked, lifting two of the buckets, leaving you the third.

You nodded silently, your good mood shot down by his sombreness. As he walked away and you felt the weight of the bucket for the first time, you realised the difficulty of what you had agreed to.

_Shit._

Davos was already setting a pace, his back to you as he began the journey back.

You lugged your bucket up against your stomach, carrying it encircled by both of your arms. You regretted helping almost immediately, your biceps and forearms burning, body aching from where the curved metal jabbed into it. Some of the water sloshed out immediately onto your chest, and you tried not to cry out at the coldness of it.

As you set one foot in front of the other you realised: you couldn’t do it.

You wouldn’t make it the whole way back. Physically your body couldn’t handle the entire half-hour journey. A flash of sympathy for a younger version of the man leading the way settled in your chest, as you remembered Danny describing this particular test.

They hadn’t been allowed to drink from the bucket if he didn’t make the walk back.

Of course, Danny had done joked about drinking anyway, thinking nothing of sneaking water elsewhere when they inevitably failed a task for impossible for children. By his side, his dedicated brother had allowed himself to struggle until his lips cracked from dehydration.

Davos glanced over his shoulder periodically, jaw locking when he started to struggle with the terrain, waiting in place when you fell too far behind. Even standing with that much weight must have been challenging, and you tried to hurry, hoping Davos’ usual workout wasn’t too impeded by your slowness.

Roots and rocks made you stumble, unable to see your feet, and you would muffle a cry out each time you fell, blinking away tears of frustration and pain as Davos glanced back at you with concern.

You’d made it about a third of the way back, the incline continuing to steepen, when you found a clearing.

“Davos, can we take a break?”

He spun around, and for a moment you looked for irritation on his face. Perhaps if you were someone else, he might have barked: “No!”

Instead he stood in place, held the buckets up and rolled his neck. You dropped your own burden, letting the water overflow as you placed it on the ground, no longer trying to conceal your panting. Davos stared up at the canopy above, blinking slowly as he watched you fail. Still, he said nothing.

He was poised to walk again, shoulders still tense as he bore the weight.

“Fucking hell,” you groaned. “Give me a second.”

Your arms burned. Davos went to speak, to stop you, as you tipped half of the bucket out onto a patch of moss nearby, but it was already done. You had more than enough water for practical use with what he was carrying alone, and your back was in agony from your uncomfortable sleep.

“No chiropractors out here,” you joked by way of explanation, rolling your shoulders and leaving the bucket on the ground for a moment, swinging your arms to stretch.

He tilted his head, in the bemused way he tended to look at you when he politely ignored a pop-culture reference. He didn’t seem to understand your thinly-veiled complaint any better.

“Chiropractors are people who fix your back.”

Your explanation came between panting inhales and exhales as you rested your hands on your thighs, catching your breath after Davos’ merciless pace up the hill. He finally put his own buckets down.

“Hm. Lean back,” he instructed, one hand in the small of your back and the other manoeuvring your shoulders. “You can recover faster upright.”

Ignoring the intensity of his touch, the way his eyes flew over your body analytically, you really could draw breath easier with this new posture.

“Thanks.”

He nodded and stepped back, hands behind his back, feet shoulder width apart like a soldier at ease.

You could have stayed in the clearing an awful lot longer. But Davos was waiting for you, his usual schedule interrupted, and you forced yourself on. He appeared patient, but you convinced yourself you were irritating him. With each step you swore you would never offer to help with this again. Nor take his daily errands granted.

The journey was made massively easier by the reduced volume of water in your bucket, and you could keep up with Davos comfortably, water pail clutched against your body. There was even a bounce in your step as you followed him, watching his stoicism. He was sweating as he fought not to spill a single drop, teeth gritted, and you were struck by the fact he’d made this difficult for himself on _purpose_.

The path grew steeper, more overgrown, carved gradually by Davos himself through the thick undergrowth. Brambles scratched at your arms, making you twist away and complain. Ahead of you, Davos let the undergrowth scrape at his skin.

“You really do that every morning?” you called to him.

You were working hard to keep your footing, prepared to throw the bucket and save yourself if your foot caught a root, whilst Davos took careful, measured paces. He could have his eyes closed for all you knew, this pilgrimage was so familiar to him now.

“Of course.”

Obviously, he did this each morning. There was always fresh water when you woke. You had never appreciated how far he walked, how hard we worked, to get it.

You jogged a little to catch up after becoming tangled with some particularly clingy thorns, trying to ignore the burn in your muscles from carrying the very little water left in your pail.

“We probably only need one bucket, in future. Don’t hurt yourself carrying more,” you called to him, guilt settling in your stomach like nausea.

“It’s training,” he grunted back, “Only five more minutes now. Keep up.”

You took that as a sign to keep your mouth closed.

It was a blessing when you finally saw the cabin, aching too much to chatter. Davos didn’t seem in a talkative mood, and you were slowly realising why.

This was a ritual. Something he’d formed for himself in the place of a proper training schedule. You’d never met anyone with self-discipline like Davos. Certainly not Danny, even back in K’un-Lun he needed nagging to train, not that you could blame him.

This was miserable.

Davos kicked the door open ahead of you, holding it for you before you both set down the buckets on the kitchenette counter.

“Fuck me, that was hard!”

You flopped onto the ground, letting your back rest against the aged wooden floor, Davos standing above you. You tried not to gulp at the sight of his sturdy boots beside your prostrate body.

Still silent, he gave you a curious look, before turning his gaze pointedly to the half-bucket of water you’d managed to carry. He didn’t say anything, but you could hear the teasing comment he was too polite to make. You stuck your tongue out at him.

“I am a little glad you do not want me to train you.”

His feet were planted next to your head, and when you looked up you could see his face, a twitch of amusement on his lips.

“You’d kick my ass,” you agreed sagely.

“You would whine. The whole time.”

You laughed in surprise before arching your back in a stretch. You liked this Davos, the one who was finally lightening up. It almost made the aching muscles worth it.

“Obviously. That _sucked_.”

He smiled.

“It gets easier.”

“Right, sure. Training and hard work and stuff,” you tried to deepen your voice, impersonating his accent.

He blinked at you, trying to stifle a laugh.

“Come here, you need to stretch out your muscles.”

He pulled you off the floor without a second thought, removing his shoes before beginning a stretching routine which you presumed he usually undertook outside. You would certainly have stared if he had been doing it inside the cabin. As he guided you to copy him through stretches, you hid your quiet surprise at just how hands-on he was.

Perhaps as an attempt to leave the light and peaceful atmosphere unbroken, his gentle hands quietly corrected your posture, straightening your hips or pulling your shoulders back as you try to hold the poses he guided you into.

For a moment he just stood behind you, unspeaking and unmoving, and you wondered if he was watching you the same way you sometimes watched him, quiet and unseen through the cabin windows as he trained or meditated. It was unnerving, and yet over in mere seconds.

He crossed in front of you, nudging your foot straighter with his own and guiding you deeper into a static lunge with a hand hooked on the inside of your knee, still unspeaking.

You wondered if he preferred this. The silence. Not having to think about words, only actions.

He mirrored you for a second, lunging deeper and more swiftly, before moving lithely into a variation of pigeon pose which you followed him into. It was easy to forget how much grace he possessed, until you saw him in motion.

After the entire routine, which he seemed to make up as he went along, both of you laid silently on your backs. The creaking wood beneath you was dry, if a little uncomfortable, and you tried to exhale as evenly and silently as the man beside you. You closed your eyes.

You were taken back to Danny’s room in K’un-Lun, both you and Davos snuck inside, your voices quiet as you teased them:

“Do you really meditate, or do you mentally – like – play Pokémon or something?”

Danny had snorted with laughter as Davos furrowed his brow in confusion.

As the American had started to speak, Davos had surprised you by talking over him, his words firm and his conviction as intense as you’d ever seen it.

“Meditation is good for the mind. The only way to stay sane. So, yes, we _really mediate_ ,” Davos told you.

He had been irritated by Danny’s cheeky wink to you, but you’d laughed anyway, ignoring Davos’ glare towards him.

It had been a good evening, you still had the notes somewhere, one of the biggest turning points in your friendship with the two of them. It had been exciting to break the rules – more exciting to goad Davos into breaking them too. You’d had honest-to-god fun, sneaking the two of them sweet bread and gossiping, almost splitting your sides with laughter before you and Davos had dived under the bed at the sound of approaching footsteps. No one had come in, but the two of you hid under the bed for long minutes, your eyes finding each other’s in the dark with exhilarated smiles. You’d lost your nerve after that scare, the two of you sneaking out after the passing monk had made you realise just how much trouble Danny and Davos would be if you were caught.

You still remembered how climbing back into your coat had been a struggle – you still needed it, even after months in the climate – and you remembered Davos had helped you slide the padded material over your shoulders. He’d even dulled his sharp remarks about your shivering. Instead, in the bitterly cold night, Davos had walked you home.

You were pulled from your memories as Davos pulled himself up, rolling his shoulders with a gentle groan. Your eyes snapped open and you found yourself disoriented, taking Davos’ offered hand robotically and using it just to pull yourself to sitting.

A little dizzy from being suddenly broken from the trance you had found yourself in, you shuffled to the steps of the porch outside, sitting on the ledge above the top step. Davos joined you, perching a few feet away and stretching out his hands, as you leant your head against the wooden supports of the porch.

The memories continued to flutter around your mind as you took in the bearded, shaggy-haired man beside you now. He looked younger, somehow, even after all he’d been through.

In your mind there was still a version of him who had timidly shuffled his feet as you whispered a goodbye and ‘ _thank you_ ’ after he walked you back to your door from the monastery, protecting you from what you feared might lie in the darkness of the cool night.

On that occasion you’d hugged him, you remembered, just quickly pulling yourself to his body as he stood awkwardly with his feet shoulder width apart and his upper body tense in the cold air.

You’d barely felt him, too swaddled by your coat, but you’d been able to feel him stiffen under your touch. He had walked you home dozens of times after that night – but you’d never tried to hug him again.

He seemed different now, not repulsed by touch but calmed by it. At least when he was drunk.

You thought of Danny, how he’d awkwardly hinted to you that he’d have you _in his room whenever_ , only for you to chuckle and shake your head. _Boring teenage years_ , you remembered thinking to yourself, _up there in that monastery_. You’d never blamed Danny for trying.

As you laughed to yourself at the memory, Davos twisted to face you, regarding you with a lazy smile. He looked peaceful. Cheeky. Healthier even after just a day of being able to eat properly.

 _What?_ he seemed to be asking, one elbow perched on his knee, his head resting casually on one hand.

You shook your head for a second before answering, your head resting on the support beam behind you.

“Do you think Danny had a crush on me, in K’un-Lun?”

Davos snorted a laugh, resting his head back on the porch to mirror you.

“Danny wanted to… Danny had an interest in anything that moved.”

Davos’ self-censorship made you smirk. He stared out at the woods, his brow furrowed from some concern you were uncomprehending of.

You rolled your eyes jokingly.

“Aw, and here I thought I was special!”

Whip-fast, his head turned, eyes searching your face and mouth stumbling to find words to undo the offence he thought he’d caused. You let the corners of your lips curl up, seeing him visibly relieved when he realised you were kidding. He was always slow to recognise joking, and it made your heart ache a little, for a younger Davos who had gone his whole life with only sparse opportunities laughter.

“It always made me feel for him, a little,” you confessed, “must be frustrating – to not have…”

You tucked your hands into your body, feeling yourself beginning to grow cold now that your heartrate had returned to normal. Your fingers hurt a little from carrying the water, and you caught your gaze absently drifting to Davos’ palm where it laid against his thigh, noting the callouses on his strong fingers.

With a blink, you forced yourself to look away.

“That is, assuming he was into women, I guessed with Colleen – ” you added clumsily.

In your peripheral vision, Davos nodded.

“The lack of distraction is by design, to keep us focused on our training.”

“I’m not sure it worked,” you teased.

Davos smiled, tilting his head in concession.

“No. You certainly distracted him plenty, though we were old enough to know better by then.”

There was a real question you wanted answering. You knew there had been something more between. It was almost primeval, how he protected you, treated this cabin like a nest to protect. _Surely,_ he wouldn’t do that for just anyone.

You longed to ask, feared his response either way.

_Davos, did you have a crush on me in K’un-Lun?_

He’d always stuck up for you, sacrificed himself for you. You’d heard from Danny how his mother punished him for welcoming you in, for spending time with an outsider. And he still did it, greeting you with that self-conscious smile when he saw you, doing extra training early in the morning to get permission to spend time with you when you wanted it.

Surely, he wouldn’t do that for just _anyone_.

“Not many young women in that monastery, huh?”

He chuckled.

“Certainly not. Even in the village, there weren’t many women our age. Certainly none as beautiful as you. I think Danny thought his dreams had come true.”

“I must have been a disappointment to him, then.”

Davos shrugged.

Your frustration with him was starting to boil over, your need for _something_ from him.

You needed a sober confession. A sign he felt the same way.

You needed him.

“I hope I wasn’t a disappointment to you. You saved my life, you know. When you first found me at the pass.”

“I will always feel honoured you believe that.”

He was getting jumpy, ready to move again, shifting his feet against the wooden steps as he found the conversation steering towards becoming emotional.

“It’s true,” you sighed, almost daring Davos to challenge you with a sideways glance.

With a returning sigh and a roll of his neck, he smiled back at you, shaking his hands out.

“I’m going for a run,” he declared, standing.

You watched him leave with a heaviness in your heart, confusion stunting your words for a second before you finally called out to him:

“Be back before its dark!”

He turned to give you a firm nod, before heading out towards the road.

*

After a few moments sat on the porch, watching his figure disappear into the woods, you kicked off your boots and headed into the cabin. You closed the door firmly behind you.

For a moment you considered a nap, or doing something _more self-indulgent_ under the covers. But it felt wrong, in a shared bed. Or what you now assumed would be a shared bed.

Instead you tried to shake the thought from your mind, splashing your face with the water you’d retrieved before looking around for something to do.

A few grocery bags remained unpacked, and you rummaged through them as Davos went for his run in the bracing early afternoon air. Some things left in the bags seemed to be personal products which he left respectfully alone, and you carefully tidied them away, smiling to yourself as you imagined the confused frown on Davos’ face as he’d taken them from the bags and quickly replaced them.

His razors and shaving cream, you noticed, were still in a bag too. You put them in the bathroom beside the soap and face wipes, carefully lined up beside your new toothbrushes. 

Then you stood back.

Seeing your things together like that, you could almost trick yourself into believing that you and Davos might be cohabiting beyond just coincidence. You forced yourself to blink, steer your mind away from those thoughts, and step out of the bathroom.

After tidying and cleaning for as long as you could bear, hardly making any progress, you finally indulged yourself in a nap. You deserved it, you reasoned, as your muscles continued to ache and your hangover had finally alleviated.

When Davos returned, sweaty and panting, he apologised profusely for waking you. You waved him off.

“No, its good. I won’t sleep tonight if I don’t get up now.”

The sun was getting low outside, as Davos quickly washed with one of the buckets of room-temperature water, and you groggily forced yourself out into the cold to start a fire.

*

You brought up the razors later, as the two of you cooked, the length of his unkempt beard somehow surprising him as he absentmindedly reached up to touch it. You suddenly realised how just how long it had been since you saw the neatly trimmed stubble he used to keep.

“Does the beard bother you?” you asked him, sneaking a chunk of carrot off his chopping board.

He gave you a resigned eyebrow raise as you crunched the veg, a slight smile on his lips.

“It’s… not my favourite.”

The room rang with the steady pattern of his knife chopping against the board, brute force making up for the bluntness of the blade, as you ignored the tin can you were opening in favour of staring at him.

“I like it!” you enthused, “It’s getting a bit unruly, though.”

He nodded, beginning to peel a potato.

“I bought a razor at the store. But the mirror in the bathroom is awkward, I haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

One thought had roamed through your mind all afternoon, even pervading your dreams, ad you found your mouth running away from your rationality.

“I can do it!”

You were slightly embarrassed by your own enthusiasm, returning to opening the can as he started to fill a pot with the ingredients he was preparing. You added the tinned beans, before catching Davos regarding you, his arms crossed.

“Would you?” he asked, one hand stroking across his chin. “It would be nice to be rid of it.”

“Do you trust me?” 

“Entirely.”

A curious eyebrow raise and a strange nod of his head, and he was agreeing.

“After we’ve eaten, then.”


	8. Close Shave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts with shaving, and ends up somewhere else entirely.

It felt like barely minutes had passed before you were stood over Davos, a new razor in one hand, trying to figure out how to orient yourself as he moved a bucket of water closer to you.

Davos had perched himself on the bathtub to give you better access to his face and you moved unsurely in the limited space around him, suddenly far less sure of yourself.

“Do you know how?” he asked you sincerely, his brown eyes wide and not holding a shred of mockery or judgement as you felt awkward about starting.

“I, um, yes. Just not without running water.”

He took your wrist delicately between his calloused fingers, moving the safety razor further from his face as he stood.

“I’ll get a bowl.”

Davos brushed past you as he left the bathroom, his hand gently guiding you out of his way until he returned with a mug of water and a pair of scissors, now dressed only in his t shirt.

“Trim first,” he instructed, handing you the only pair of scissors you had in the cabin.

They were undersized sewing scissors, but suitably sharp. As you started taking messy chunks of black hair out of his beard, letting the cut hair fall into the bath, Davos let his eyes fall closed.

You felt nervous being trusted his much, your spare hand hoovering near his face as you tried to keep your balance, determined not to accidentally hurt him.

After a few clumsy attempts at trimming his beard, you just crouched over him, cupping him face in once hand as you used the scissors in the other. You were so close, you found yourself holding your breath.

 _This was normal_ , you rationalised, _necessary._

You had done it the night before, cupped his face and been this close to him.

Granted, you had been drunk.

And on the verge of kissing him.

You shook the memory from your head.

Davos didn’t seem to mind your touch, in-fact his eyes had remained closed, leaving you without instruction or witness as you sized up the situation in front of you. Hair had fallen from his face until you were sure the scissors couldn’t do any more, his face scruffy if a little more visible than before. All you had was a mug of water, a can of shaving cream, and a razor. Davos’ gentle neck, the planes of his face, the trust he gave you, all exposed to you.

His eyes opened lazily as you cleared your throat, _clink_ -ing the razor against the mug of water as you wet it.

“I’m sorry its cold,” you apologised, wetting Davos’ face with a rag, wincing at how cold it was.

Davos shrugged.

He sat silently as you shaved him, his eyes closed and his posture relaxed. You sat beside him on the edge of the bathtub as you worked the shaving cream into his face, lathering it in a way which felt messy and unpractised and strange on another person’s face – though Davos didn’t seem to mind.

The scrape of the razor made you wince as you longed for running water, drawing stripes of shaving cream from his face. To his credit, Davos remained steadfastly unmoving, calm.

A quiet fell across the room, and you could hear the drag of the blade across his beard. After long minutes and dozens of washes of the razor, you patted his face clean to see the damage.

Remarkably, he was _almost_ cleanshaven on the side of his face which was exposed to you. 

The space in the bathroom was limited, and you couldn’t reach the other side of his face without moving him. It was inelegant and awkward, but the fear of cutting him outweighed your self-consciousness as you felt the weight of the razor in your hand, sizing up the logistics in front of you.

“Can you – ” you started, one hand on his unshaven cheek as if trying to twist him.

His eyes flew open, his daze broken as he blinked at you.

“I need to shave your other side,” you explained.

It felt as though you had woken a sleepwalker, a strange guilt for disturbing his trance.

“Thank you,” he muttered quietly, eyeing the razor in your hand.

You moved it further from his face as a comfort.

Whilst you had expected him to turn, perhaps facing into the bathtub or even offering for you to stand the other side of him, he guided you to stand.

“Davos?” you murmured, the razor still in one hand, the mug and rag in the other.

He closed his legs, giving you space to stand over him, and you frowned as he gently pulled you closer.

“Sit,” he muttered.

“We don’t have to–”

With a slow look up at you, you realised he was completely serious. It took one last tug from Davos for you to sink down onto his lap, aware of the warmth of your bodies against each other as you sat on his lap, your own legs splayed either side of his muscular thighs at an awkward angle which forced you to rest almost all your weight on him.

Had you been sat on anyone else the position might have felt precarious. As Davos’ hands wrapped themselves around your back, and you let yourself relax onto him, you felt more stable than with your feet on the ground.

“Better?” he murmured, turning his unshaven side to you.

You nodded silently, stroking your hand through the lather on half of his relaxed face just because you could.

It really was better. At this angle you were overwhelmingly close to him, able to see his features in the warm last streams of light which streamed through the West-facing bathroom window, his eyes open to watch as you shuffled your weight to settle yourself, one hand moving the skin of his face before you took the razor to the remainder of his scruff.

He closed his eyes obediently, his shoulders relaxing and his hands comforting on the small of your back. You tried not to sigh, comfortable and well-fed for the first time in months, so close to Davos you could hardly believe it possible.

After long, careful minutes, you tilted his head up to shave his neck.

You swore and winced and apologised as the blade nicked the skin over his jawline, the new angle causing you to cut him. Blood seeped into the shaving cream around the cut, making it pinken as you quickly reached to grab one of the bandages drying nearby.

You pressed it to his face to stem the bleeding, apologising over and over. He didn’t even flinch, and for a split second you wondered if he’d even noticed the drama. He opened his eyes slowly, watching as you worriedly pressed the bandage to the small cut which seemed determined to bleed as dramatically as possible.

“Davos, fuck, I’m so sorry,” you winced, “does it hurt?”

“It’s fine,” he promised.

You hissed, pressing the bandage tighter before looking to his face with a frown. He grimaced back to you.

“It stings a tiny, tiny bit. I can promise you I’ve survived far worse,” he told you firmly, a sedate smile on his lips, bringing one hand to cover yours where it held the bandage to his chin.

His skin was warm, his fingers firm, as he watched you intently.

“I just feel bad because I did it,” you explained lamely.

His eyes fell, looking down unseeingly between your bodies, and you felt a pang of guilt in your chest which was not from the thin line of crimson across his chin.

“I didn’t mean – ”

“It’s okay,” he told you softly, regretfully, “I understand.”

 _You don’t_ , you wanted to tell him. _You don’t understand._

Instead you remained silent, painfully slow and careful as you passed the blade over his neck. His eyes fluttered slowly closed again, tilting his head back for even better access, his trust in you entirely undiminished in a way which made your cheeks burn and your heart ache.

As you continued you were equal parts nervous to touch him, and terrified to cut him by being distant and careless. After long minutes of fighting your trembling fingers you finally had him cleanshaven. With the freshest towel you could find you cleaned his face up carefully, grateful he’d kept his eyes closed as you stood from his lap and pottered around the tiny bathroom.

“Done,” you told him softly, laying the towel in the bath with one wet _thud_.

He didn’t move for a second before opening his eyes and reaching to his face, feeling his own smooth cheeks for the first time in months. He craned to see in the broken mirror, and you stood in the bathroom doorway, watching as he twisted his head side to side in a rare moment of self-consciousness which made your tongue feel heavier in your mouth, restricting you from making a joke.

“How does it look?” he asked you, turning to you with open, honest eyes.

After spending so long shaving him, you finally looked at his bare face as a whole.

“Good,” you choked out, “smooth. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without stubble.”

He hummed, turning back to the mirror and holding his fingertips to stroke over his face, straining to see himself in the distorted reflection on the wall.

“It never lasts long. What do you think?”

“I like it,” you nodded, walking towards him to lay the razor across the unusable sink, its blades rinsed clean.

With a yawn, you reached to grab the towel, ready to clean up the fallen hair from the ground and the bath. Davos grabbed it first.

“I’ll deal with this, you must be tired.”

For a second you raised an eyebrow in challenge, but he tilted his head, jokingly knocking your hand away with his own knuckles. You laughed at his childishness, and he gave you a smile so brilliant you found yourself breathlessly retreating to the bedroom.

“Thank you,” he called suddenly, an afterthought. In the privacy of the empty room, you let yourself smile openly.

He hummed to himself as he cleaned the bathroom, and you could hear it through the open door as you changed for bed. He knocked gently on the inside of the doorframe before stepping out, giving you a glance and a smile as he reached to refill the mug with water, taking it back into the bathroom.

You caught yourself staring and blamed it on his lack of a beard. Nothing else.

The two of you brushed your teeth side by side, even toothpaste and fresh toothbrushes feeling luxurious after so long _making do_ , and your heart skipped a beat as you caught his foamy smile at you in the mirror.

He stripped off his daytime clothes for a pair of pyjama pants, emerging from the bathroom still rubbing his face in sheer surprise at the novelty of it, and for a second you reconsidered whether you’d even be able to sleep beside him without the threat of bursting into flames as your cheeks grew hotter with his proximity.

Without the threat of starvation or exposure killing you, with luxuries and easier days, it seemed your heart had decided to begin to cause you new problems. He stretched, his chest muscles flexing as he stood in the No Man’s Land between the couch and the bed, and you fumbled for the words to say as he looked at you sleepily.

“We can share the bed,” you called to him.

He frowned, but acquiesced, and you realised you had been right to withhold from the _bed_ discussion earlier in the day. Now it was time both of you to collapse into a much-needed sleep, he had no energy left to argue. Invigorated by having _actual food_ , the day felt longer than any you could remember in past months.

Whilst that was nice, it was also exhausting.

When Davos briefly made a protest and headed towards the couch, it took a single stern glare for him to pause.

“My back is killing me from sleeping on that thing,” you told him firmly, “and you shouldn’t have to sleep on it either. You take one side, I’ll take the other.”

He slid under the covers beside you without further question, careful not to touch you.

“Thank you,” he muttered suddenly, one hand rubbing across his face, “I feel a bit more like myself.”

The words broke your heart a little more than you’d like to admit to yourself, and you had to tuck your hand beneath your pillow to resist the urge to reach out and stroke his newly smooth cheek.

“Any time.”

“Thank you,” he repeated, fidgeting in bed and dragging the sheets to and fro across your body a little as he got comfortable.

By the time you fell asleep, you could feel his legs resting against your own.

*

It seemed inevitable that with Davos’ increasing need to seek out your touch and your painfully strong affections for him, the two of you would wake up entangled.

And yet it surprised both of you.

Davos was already awake, halted in his ‘opening the curtains’ morning routine by his numb arm which laid trapped between your waist and the mattress, his other hand steadfastly against his side as your own arms were reached around him.

Your faces were inches apart as you blinked awake in confusion, his eyes meeting yours. Both of you seemed as startled as the other. Quietly, you disentangled, getting some distance between your pleasantly warm bodies. You missed his body heat as you stood up from bed, the covers slipping off your legs as they were wrapped around him.

“More comfortable than the couch?” you asked absently, rummaging for some clothes which didn’t smell too bad and making a mental note to stop putting off doing laundry at the lake.

“Certainly,” Davos’ voice was flat as he walked to the kitchen, stretching and avoiding your eyes, “although more crowded.”

With an unnatural laugh, you pulled your bundled clothes to your chest, walking towards the bathroom. As the door closed behind you with a creak you could relax, setting your clothes on the ground, taking a moment to stare into the broken mirror before you changed.

The ghosts of the injuries you’d once cradled in here still haunted you as you stripped.

You had reassured Davos over and over again that it was an accident, and you didn’t hold his instinctive reaction against him. He certainly regretted it enough, his minor breakdown afterwards was enough to convince you he really would give anything to take back his actions.

You knew he loathed the part of him which made him so dangerous, so quick and responsive, treating everything like a threat. Strangely, it had never been an issue in K’un-Lun. He had just been _Davos_ , stronger and more centred than any other man you’d ever met, but certainly not dangerous.

He hadn’t killed, back then, you supposed. Hadn’t actually used his training. He hadn’t fought in fear of his life, hadn’t known the power that the Iron Fist gave him.

He was so much older than in K’un-Lun. Not in years, but in his soul. He carried so much more, his bending morals and his memories constantly fighting for presence in a mind which had once been entirely focussed on a single goal. Before leaving home, you’d always envied his deceptively uncomplicated life. He worked hard, he trained harder, he hurt and was hurt and that was hard, but he was so direct in his goals that you had admired the simplicity of his days.

_Get the Iron Fist. Impress his mother. Guard the strange woman he’d found on the mountain pass. Make sure Danny didn’t get him in too much trouble._

He’d had a short list of priorities.

Now he was burdened with so much more. A darkness he tried to hide from you as he wandered off into the forest, fragments of his life in light and dark which he was determined to piece together, reconciling how he was raised and the person he wanted to be.

With a sigh you let your forehead touch the cool glass of the mirror in front of you.

That day you had hidden in behind the dingy bathroom door, afraid of him and trembling as you nursed your bruised ribs, felt a lifetime ago. And yet the memory it was still present. In the unchanged walls of the cabin and their peeling wallpaper, the noises of his training which made you flinch, in the bloodied bandages which never quite seemed clean. But present too was this new _thing_ which seemed to be developing – these strengthened feelings. It was the opened can of shaving cream and the occasional dark hair on the ground which Davos had missed during his largely-successful cleaning, in how he leant into the warmth of your touch, how you worried when he was gone.

The razor sat washed by the sink, proud right where it belonged beside your products. You had gotten the toothbrushes in different colours to remember which belonged to each of you, sharing toothpaste and mouthwash. You had a towel drying beside Davos’ bandages, and the room suddenly couldn’t have felt more different to that day he hurt you.

Everything was there, the domesticity and the ease with which you shared a space. Your toothbrushes shared a glass, Davos fingerprints marked the section of mirror he had rubbed clean, your clothes sat crumpled in one corner where you’d forgotten to pick them up. Both of you were here in harmony.

A dryness rose in your throat as you took it all in. All the manifestations of the change which had occurred the between the two of you, a closeness even beyond the deep friendship you had developed in K’un-Lun.

You had told him he was already forgiven. That you weren’t afraid of him. Now, knowing the closeness of waking up in his arms, you forced yourself to actually believe that.

He hated lying. And you had been lying to him. But not anymore.

You left the bathroom shaken.

After far too long spent overthinking, almost to the point of tears, you had dressed quickly and jumped as you noticed Davos stood a few feet from the door.

There was a flicker of concern on his face and you pointedly ignored it, instead smiling and thanking him for the breakfast he had left laid out for you. He shrugged off your thanks as usual, busying himself with cleaning up the kitchen and decanting the last of the water into bottles as you ate.

“I slept in,” he told you as you washed up, “we’re almost out of water.”

You shrugged. Sleeping-in was pretty irrelevant here, you had nowhere to be, but you knew it mattered to Davos. Early mornings were normalcy, a gruelling schedule which gave him some sense of satisfaction as he pulled himself through chores and training before the sun had the chance to establish itself in the sky.

“We don’t need much,” you reasoned, “plus there’s laundry to be done. I’ll come with you?”

To your surprise, he nodded in a quick agreement.

Truthfully, you had expected him to be disoriented by sharing a bed with you. You knew this would happen. The car had felt different, a matter of survival. Even as you still held those memories of sleeping on his chest close to your heart, you knew he had been motivated by nothing more than a need for faceless comfort and warmth.

To share the now bed was something…. more. Intimate and real and not _strictly_ necessary. Yet he seemed to completely take it in his stride, just as he had started to enjoy the casual touches between you. The image of him contentedly closing his eyes last night as you had lathered up his face sprung to mind, trusting and relaxed even as you had a razor to the delicate skin of his neck.

He waited for you by the door, buckets in hand, as you pulled on your boots and bundled up a backpack of clothes to be washed – in the full knowledge Davos would insist on carrying it back once the fabric was heavy with water.

“Okay?” he asked softly, frowning subtly as you heaved the backpack onto your back.

“Yep!”

With a nod and a strange tinge to your voice, you let him hold the door open, heading down to the river.

*

The routine you formed with Davos from that day forwards had shifted glacially, moving slowly and incrementally until your lives together suddenly seemed dizzyingly far from how you had been living all those months ago.

Superficially, not much had changed. He still fetched water and trained, split various chores as you worked on keeping the cabin liveable and the two of you alive to live in it. The two of you still adventured out on hikes and foraged, still spent quiet evenings in silence and others in rapid, engaging conversation.

The rest of the wine had remained untouched, saved as a special treat and a terrible idea all compressed into one bottle, a cork away from another night like the one you had shared the first night after your adventure to the grocery store.

Yet with lingering touches and moments of quiet, staring appreciation, things were different. Waking up in one another’s arms no longer made you awkwardly try and shuffle away, instead it felt like home.

Dinner, now a much more pleasant affair than when you had first arrived, was still a checkpoint. A shared moment in each day which kept the steady rhythm of your lives in place as you silently ate, legs pressed together.

Each night the two of you could work seamlessly in the kitchen, often with one of you starting to prepare the food while the other trudged in from outside, freshening up before joining in.

A full month after Davos had started sleeping in your bed he wandered inside with apologies about being late for dinner, his grown-out hair strewn with undergrowth, his hands muddied from training.

It took him less than a minute to scrub up, his hair and regrown-stubble wet as he casually joined you in the kitchen. His hip bumped yours as he pulled a chopping board towards himself, silently inferring the help you would need.

“Davos?”

“Hm?” he grunted, struggling with the blunt kitchen knives to chop tinned carrots.

You had agreed to go all out, splitting one of the precious cans of chickpeas, agreeing the pair of you deserved it for surviving another week.

The looming eventuality of another trip into the real world hung heavy in both of your minds, but you could both gladly ignore it for a little longer – avoiding counting the dwindling supply of cans and bags of carbs left secure from pests in the car.

It was one of many things you’d spent the day being distracted by, another trip to the real world bringing to the forefront of your mind just how unsustainable this lifestyle was.

“I was thinking about putting together a book,” you announced to him suddenly.

The chopping stopped as he rested the point of the knife against the block for a second, before slowly starting in his task again.

“What about?”

“K’un-Lun,” you admitted, loathing the instant tensing of his shoulders.

He didn’t reply.

“Will you help?” you pressed, his body language suddenly closed off from you, your bodies no longer casually brushing up against one another.

“No.”

The he was leaving, out the door with the heavy soup pot, ready to boil water for dinner. He grunted at the weight of the metal container, and you found yourself stood alone in the kitchen, his answer and his body language seeming to ring in your ears like a sharp gunshot.

 _Just when everything had been going so well_ , you lamented.

As he started a fire outside, unusually slow, you watched mournfully through the window.

It had been on your mind for weeks, but you had been putting off broaching the subject with Davos. You’d been nervous to ask him, in truth. To stir up old memories and to risk rocking the boat, when the two of you had been on peaceful, which had floated suspiciously still waters for so long. Outside, his jaw was set firmly as he nurtured the small fire until the kindling and larger logs caught, smoke billowing up and making his eyes water as he fanned the flames.

You wouldn’t write a word of your book if it upset him, you swore to yourself. You owed him that much.

Even if it meant the last two years of your life would be for naught.

Suddenly your eyes blurred with tears, surprising you with the stunning realisation of how much you _cared_. Trying to ignore the hot feeling of tears sleeping down your cheeks, you picked up the knife Davos had been using, continuing to dice the carrots which he had largely finished with already before scraping them into a bowl.

You swore as you accidentally caught your finger with the knife, making Davos dash back inside, his heavy boots thudding up the stairs so quick you barely had time to hide your mistake.

“It’s nothing,” you grumbled, your finger in your mouth to stem the blood.

It really was. Bleeding, yes, but a shallow cut. Nothing serious.

Wordlessly Davos returned from the bathroom, a section of one of his freshly washed training bandages ripped off. He tied it around your finger expertly, heartbreakingly familiar with the knot he used to close the bandage and protect your cut.

Without words he set the knife down on the counter, taking the bowl of chopped vegetables and chickpeas outside, his gaze lingering on you for just a second as you stood in shock in the kitchen.

You cradled your injured hand to your body, feeling suddenly self-conscious under Davos’ protectiveness. He was an enigma at times, and yet he never failed to care for you. In his own, curious way.

For long minutes you stood in the kitchen cradling your bandaged finger. You could see Davos’ form as he sat outside cooking, and you knew he could see your silhouette through the window. You never managed to completely miss each other’s glances, always staring for just a few seconds too long, catching eye contact for a heart-racing second. The slight pain in your finger grounded you as you tried to summon up the courage to go outside, to continue your routine and sit beside Davos and feel giddy with each brush of your bodies against each other until you shivered too much and had to come inside to warm up.

An apology was already on your lips as you headed outside, bowls and cutlery in hand.

As he heard you coming Davos shifted on the log beside the fire, moving to give you space to sit. Your mouth suddenly became dry as you helped Davos serve up the two meals, taking the hot bowl in your hands and feeling the warmth of steam on your face.

Words you had intended to be heartfelt and serious became croaky and awkward as you tapped your spoon against the side of your bowl, your heart in your throat and Davos steadfastly staring into the fire.

“I’m sorry for asking about the book thing. I know K’un-Lun is… its _yours_. Not my story to tell.”

“You should write it,” Davos growled.

Sensing a trap, although Davos had never been one to mince his words, you frowned.

“I… I don’t have to.”

Rolling his shoulders, then his neck, Davos pulled his bowl close to his body and planted his feet wide. He leant into you a little as he did, his warmth against your side through your coat, the steam from his meal next to his face.

“I overreacted. You should do it,” he told you solemnly, leaning closer into you.

His closeness made you mute for a moment. You gulped. The food was still too hot, but you had no idea what else to do, taking a spoonful and lifting it to take a bite. Dropping his own spoon into his bowl, Davos stilled your hand.

“Too hot,” he muttered, and you put your spoon down like a chided child.

“Would it be too raw? Too soon to write about it?” you blurted out.

Davos shook his head.

“Do it. I’d love to read it.”

Your conversation petered out as the two of you slowly ate, until suddenly both of your bowls were on the ground empty and Davos was laughing at a joke you’d made, happier tears in your own eyes as your conversation became more sillier and sillier. He had tucked you under his arm in delight, his bicep flexing as he tugged you into his side.

“You’re cold,” he realised, one hand pulled in between his, “we should go inside.”

He almost never got cold in the evenings, but he’d become increasingly aware of how easily the night air made you shiver as winter drew in. For a little while would use the opportunity to pull you close to him, before sending you inside, insisting on putting out the fire and cleaning up by himself.

You knew the pattern, but stayed for a moment, accepting the cold which made your toes numb just to live in this moment a little longer. Your arm wrapped around his, holding him in place as he tried to fuss and clear up, darkness settling around the pair of you.

“You’re sure you don’t mind me writing about K’un-Lun?”

With an exasperated laugh, one you didn’t expect, he bodily pulled you up to stand beside you. Pushing you towards the house, he panicked for a second as you tripped, before you stood again and returned his laugh as you stumbled forwards to collect the empty bowls.

When you stood he was close to you, _very_ close, with his lips pulled into a tight smile.

“I don’t mind,” he told you gently, “do it.”

Suddenly you felt very raw, aware of the miles and miles of forest which surrounded you and Davos, the oasis you were in with just one other human being nearby. One other human being who was complex and challenging and caring to the point of self-sacrifice. And staring into your eyes in the low fire light, orange catching the deep brown of his irises and the stubble following the line of his face reminiscent of a younger Davos who could never have stood this close to you.

 _Where did this new Davos come from?_ You wanted to demand, a man banned from emotional attachment now the most important person on the planet to you, his slightly parted lips tempting you in a way which seemed suspiciously intentional.

You smiled, nodded, and numbly walked inside to wash up.

*

As the sun rose the next morning, Davos’ wrist had found its way onto your collarbone, resting there lazily as his hand twitched from sleep. For once you were awake before him, absently watching the room lightening, your mind completely consumed by the task you had assigned yourself.

You pried yourself from his warm body, still feeling the ghost of his rough hand on your sensitive skin. He stayed asleep that morning, as you unloaded all your notebooks and materials, getting to work as he slowly roused. An empty notebook from the trunk of your car and a couple of hotel-branded biros were all you could scavenge to write with, but they were enough for a start.

Day after day, careful to keep up your half of the chores needed for basic survival in the cabin, you began writing.

It felt mundane, and yet enjoyably peaceful, this new routine you had started.

You had begun to structure everything you could remember about K’un-Lun, writing down timelines and anecdotes, maps sketched out on scavenged wallpaper and empty novel pages to save scribbling in your notebooks. Ballpoint pen marks were scratched all across the walls, your notes scattered across the little dining table, weighed down by Davos’ dragon statuettes. Occasionally you would catch him staring at your words, even noting corrections in tiny, neat script, as though he was afraid you would notice.

Faced with the notion of filling a book, suddenly it felt as though there couldn’t be enough words in the world to surmise your experience.

Each evening you could perch on the bed or the little couch to work. Like clockwork you would be distracted at the first orange light of sunset as Davos came home from a run in the woods, a trip to wash, a session of increasingly-hopeless foraging, and greeted you with a smile and a soft ‘hey’ which drew your gaze up from your notes.

It was agonisingly domestic, and you would feel your cheeks ache with a smile to match his as he returned home.

 _Home_.

 _“Come home safe!”_ You would call after him.

Or he would reassure you: “ _I’ll be home before midday.”_

_“Do we have enough water at home?”_

You hadn’t noticed the word to begin with, as it snuck its way cruelly into your vocabulary. It had undergone a bizarre transformation. From a simple mistake when you ought to have been referring to the ‘cabin’, it now seemed natural.

Now, the magnitude of it struck you intensely each time you heard it.

 _Home_.

This strange domesticity was further exacerbated by the project you had undertaken. You would alternate cooking – one of you pottering around the kitchen or fire as the other looked on an undertook menial jobs – and with the distraction of survival conversation flowed freely.

As the days passed you steadily filled the pages of your notebook, devoting time to figuring out how to document the vivid experiences which would now be relegated to the pages of history.

If you thought too hard about K’un-Lun being gone, you would cry.

The steady flow of your memories about K’un-Lun slowly grew stunted, and you found yourself dazed by spending days in the annals of your memories. It was strange, unnerving, to be so consumed by memories of a younger Davos as you found yourself interrupted occasionally by the present-day version of the man himself.

He was still grieving, still reticent to discuss his home, and you wondered if he’d ever be able to talk freely about it. Certainly he was willing to have heavier conversations with you, under the cover of night where your faces were hidden from one another or with the aid of alcohol.

It had started with innocent questions,

He would look over your shoulder occasionally, curious, and you tried not to hide what you were doing from him. Davos even listened to you grumble about your own lack of detail in journal entries, or acted as a willing ear when you tried to figure through the dates photos were taken, or recall correct vocabulary.

A strange look passed over his face on the day you tried to figure out the date he and Danny had entered the Sun Chamber. You had asked him as a passing comment, interrupting him on the way to wash up after a training session, his face slick with sweat in a way which made it difficult not to stare.

“You don’t have to answer, I’m sorry I asked. I know you don’t want to be involved…”

He shook his head, and you noticed his knuckles were busted again – though not as badly as when he had first started training outside. He was getting better at wrapping his hands and stopping when they hurt – though only so you wouldn’t get upset with him.

“I would help if I could,” he apologised, “but I have no idea in terms of… your calendar.”

“That’s okay, I appreciate it anyway.”

He hummed, and you rested your head back against the back of the couch to look at him upside down. He seemed at ease, able to talk to you easily about K’un-Lun for the first time. That surprised you.

You knew he spent the days falling into the past just as you did, though he didn’t write his memories down. He had so much more than you, decades with the sacred place he had lost. You felt inadequate in comparison. Unable to tell the story.

But you would still try.

“I’m heading to the lake for a swim,” he told you, his words an offer as much as a statement as he looked down at you with a fond smile.

“Good,” you teased, closing your notebook firmly, and standing to grab your boots, “you stink.”

“So do you.”

With a good-natured swat to his arm, you followed him out the door to the lake, not at all prepared for a freezing swim.

*

That night, for the first time, he asked to read over a page you had written. He read slowly as he looked over your account of the days around his fight in the Sun Chamber.

“Forgive me for saying, I fear I am out of line,” he began, and you shook your head, insisting he continue. “but I feel you can never truly express K’un-Lun. Only the version of it you saw. The same is true of me, of… of any of us.”

“I know. I was an outsider,” you mused, “and K’un-Lun took me in. Accepted me. I think that story’s worth telling. You’re the only person who could _know_ it, but I think my account is… something. If you don’t want to write about it, I’d like to. With your blessing.”

“As long as you’re aware of that, as you tell the story, I don’t think anyone can begrudge you that.”

You observed him warily, trying to read the strange look on his face. You hated when he got like this. Cryptic. Hiding his true meaning behind his words. ‘ _Tell me what you’re thinking!’_ you wanted to scream. It wouldn’t work. He would only clam up more.

“Help me, then,” you asked weakly.

“No.”

Davos’ answer was so quick, it seemed like a reflex. A defence against remembering the place which had made him, and rejected his offer to lay down his life for it. You pushed the issue.

“As far as we know, there are only three people alive who remember K’un-Lun!”

He cleared his throat, staring abruptly down at the page he was fiddling with, and you felt a pang of guilt. Davos stood, walking to the door, a fire already lit and crackling outside. His sudden question about your book had interrupted dinner preparations – not that you had minded – and he ignored you as he returned to the task at hand.

You followed him, one of your books sliding to the floor in your bid to not let him wander off.

“I just mean,” you continued, “I can’t do it justice alone. But I still want to try. We need to make sure it’s remembered.”

He was stoically silent, staring at the trees outside, refusing to look at you.

“I was there for two years. That’s a long time. I know… something. Enough to be worth sharing.”

He ignored you still, and you were only a step behind him as he walked to the kitchenette and began grabbing bowls and cutlery. You tried to help, but just found yourself in the way. You cursed at the weight of the stew pot as you tried to lift it outside, and Davos quickly took it from you, glad for the distraction as he hurried towards the fire pit.

“Think about it,” you called after him.

He didn’t reply.

*

At no point had Davos formally agreed to help with your project, and yet each evening for the following weeks you found him more and more willing to tell you stories about K’un-Lun. The good, the bad, the hidden-from-outsiders and the less-than-flatting.

You tried not to take notes, letting your mind hold on to his words, and found yourself falling into listening to him as a confidant rather than a journalist.

There was story after story which would be no use to a book, or a newspaper article. Story after story which only he and you cared about, little scrapes and pieces of family gossip from his childhood, all fascinating building blocks of the man sat just a little too far across the couch from you.

You’d started waking up earlier, staying up later, using your time alone to scribble down the things which he’d told you, the memories his words had stirred up. The trunk at the base of your bed became a repository for _K’un-Lun_ – sketches and stories and notes, the photographs and your journals carefully stowed there.

During the day you would get everything out, gaze at the photos which Davos found too painful.

It was nice to have work. To feel purpose again.

The days grew less monotonous as you created something new each day, until you decided you deserved a weekend. Going through your backpack slowly, through photos and notebooks and mementos, was a kind of therapy.

A mental clear out and a reminder that what you had been through was _real_. It seemed to mean something, as you wrote it down. It was work and art and something you could show other people – if you ever got your hands on a way to write everything in order.

You copied your notes out, made sketches and wrote a sequence to everything, pages dogeared and dated.

Then, under the last notebook in your bag, you had felt a shiver run down your spine.

Screen shiny and mirror-like, its battery dead, sat your phone.

Newer memories reared their head at the sight of it, making you agitated and stressed. You hid the device again, despite knowing it likely wouldn’t even turn on. You had grown so close to Davos, your relationship and trust so much _more_ than when you’d texted Danny. When you’d hidden the truth from a man who had since sacrificed so much for you. Davos still thought you were being actively hunted.

He didn’t know that Danny had saved his ass. That he had lied to authorities and played the hero for his brother. It was only something subtle, and yet the guilt slammed into you full force, making you sweat and look over your shoulder to confirm Davos was still outside.

For some reason it made you disgusted with yourself, that you had come between the two of them. Their feelings for one another were complicated, as only siblings who had been through what they had been through could understand.

You had come between that.

Even after hiding the phone and picking up a new journal to begin going through, you couldn’t focus. You needed to move. You needed to get away from the memories of K’un-Lun.

You needed to tell Davos the truth.

“Let’s go on a hike,” you abruptly announced to Davos that morning.

It was still early. He was pottering around in the kitchen as you worked at the coffee table, having just begun preparing breakfast for the two of you. At your sudden words he gave you an amused glance, his eyes trailing to the water he had just hiked a fair distance to get.

You huffed.

Of course, he hiked every day. But you didn’t. And a change of route wouldn’t kill him.

Plus, he would have delightful company.

“A direction we haven’t gone yet. Just for fun. Let’s see what we find! There could be new food, a nice view, y’know. Something.”

He smirked at you, amused by some private joke he didn’t bother to share with you, but nodded. He was dressed, his boots laced, as you rubbed sleep from your eyes.

“Ready to go when you are,” he agreed.

*

The route you took was a steep uphill, starting with a scramble up a verge which you had carefully avoided thus far. It seemed like Davos had been here before – no doubt he had a mental map of the whole area, threats evaluated and resources counted – but you appreciated how he let you be surprised by the terrain as you hiked it at your own pace.

Davos followed or led the way depending on what you wanted, sometimes climbing a rock or steep section of path first so he could offer you a hand. It wasn’t unnoticed by you that he always held onto you a little longer than he needed to, your fingers interlaced for a few metres of walking after each obstacle.

He would drop your hand after a few seconds, but you still smiled each time his thumb ghosted across the back of your hand.

“How are you finding the writing?” he asked as the terrain levelled out, both of you breathing easier as you wandered up the steady slope.

“Weird,” you admitted, “nice.”

You took a deep breath as the forest around you seemed to grow very close for a moment, the dense trees hemming you in with no path ahead until Davos expertly weaved through a gap between two bushes, waiting for you to follow with a patient hand holding brambles aside.

“I hadn’t thought about K’un-Lun in so long… not really. Not about the people. The streets and the weather and… how much I miss it.”

Your voice grew thick with emotion, and you noticed Davos subtly tilting his face from yours, no doubt feeling the same things. He didn’t reply, but you knew he understood. Better than anyone.

He grew surly as the walk continued, and you wondered where his mind had gone, which dark place had sapped his recent optimism. You found yourself jogging to keep up, worried to hold his arm for fear he might suddenly reject you.

“Davos… there’s something I probably should have told you.”

He looked up at you with an absentminded frown, kicking at a root on the path he was carving. It didn’t move, and you saw his top lip snarl as he almost stumbled.

“Danny text me. When we were on the run.”

“I am aware.”

You sighed, suddenly having second thoughts about bringing this up at all. You’d been getting along so well, feeling closer to him, _finally_ starting to understand this new version of Davos.

Understanding he wasn’t so different than the man you’d known in K’un-Lun.

It seemed a shame to kick up a fuss, to muddy the waters by confessing you’d… omitted a little truth. You hoped his moral code had loosened enough to accept white lies – it had certainly stretched in other capacities.

“There was a little more. To what he said.”

 _Davos would know,_ you panicked, _he would be completely aware that your phone had been dead for months. He’d know how long you’d hidden the truth._

“He, um, lied to the police. Said you’d left the country. I just thought… I realised I hadn’t told you. And maybe you might feel better.”

You fidgeted, wringing your hands nervously, as you recalled how nervous Davos had been on the drive to and from the store. You could have told him then, you realised, and soothed his fear a little.

Internally, you kicked yourself.

“How noble,” Davos replied flatly.

“He’s trying to protect you,” you elaborated, confused Davos hadn’t already reacted more strongly. Had he misunderstood?

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“It makes no difference. You acted as you felt was right.”

He was still trekking, kicking aside brambles where they clung to his pants, and you found yourself stopped in your tracks. You forgot to keep up for a moment in shock. 

Was he really so unbothered?

You reached a clearing, which then turned to a clifftop. Davos’ arm was held out beside him to make sure you didn’t get too close to the edge as he took in the view, looking down fearlessly, before stepping back towards a fallen tree and taking a seat.

It seemed too perfect.

He’d been leading the way here, you realised. Of course he had.

The thought of him finding this place on a run and making a mental note to bring you back here made your chest clench for a moment, but Davos was already talking, pointing out the route you’d walked and a clearing where supposedly you should be able to make out the cabin through the endless green of tall, uniform foliage.

You sat beside him in quiet awe, Davos spreading his feet side until one of his legs lay against yours. Just like how you sat near the fire at night as you cooked. You resisted the urge to rest your head against him. His earlier grumpiness still bothered you, like a fly buzzing around your ear, even as he seemed back to himself.

Despite making idle comments about the beauty of your surroundings, you knew Davos’ mind was elsewhere. Inevitably, after a lull in the conversation, his brother came up again.

“I wish I could believe him to be selfless, but truthfully I think Danny has a guilty conscience.”

You said nothing. His tone told you he had never even considered blaming you for hiding Danny’s actions from him. In his mind the two of you were presumably so united that it seemed obvious you would side against his brother. You wondered just what it would take for him to lose his faith in you. His trust seemed endless.

Davos’ words sounded as lazy as they were pointed.

“If he’d just used the Iron Fist for its intended purpose. Stayed with us… things might be very different.”

You understood that Danny’s desertion had hurt Davos more than you could ever know. He cared for people deeply, would lay down his life to protect anyone he considered part of his family. Davos had soldiered through Danny’s victory against him, through the physical pain, through the rejection from his family. He had still trained, still spent time with the two of you as Danny became the Iron Fist as though his heart wasn’t breaking.

Danny had taken his entire identity. All the while, he had congratulated Danny, guided his way, even helped him as his own family rejected him. Losing Danny had been like losing part of his heart. You wondered if Danny would ever realise how much Davos had given up for him.

He would sit closer to you these days, you realised. Like he wasn’t protecting himself from you. When you relaxed your posture a little, you found your shoulder brushing his. Davos didn’t flinch.

“Instead he was off _running around New York,_ on his _gap year_. Just because he got bored.”

You got it. He’d taken the highest mantle, a sacred power, and decided he wanted more. Davos couldn’t sympathise with that.

“Did you expect anything different?” you murmured.

You hated yourself for the words as they left your mouth. But in truth, the power of the Iron Fist was only appealing to Danny when he’d been able to _use it_. And K’un-Lun hadn’t provided the ‘bad guys’ to punch which the mythology around the weapon had promised.

Davos bristled, though it was only subtle tells which gave him away. The flex of his jaw, a millimetre-small roll of his neck, the rise of his chest as he inhaled.

He released his breath in a heavy sigh, loudly, like he didn’t realise he was doing it.

“Danny always had his eyes on the horizon. There was another world out there for him. He needed the Fist to get it,” you muttered.

You were glad to be in nature. The walls of the cabin felt too small to contain this conversation.

Davos wasn’t brooding, he didn’t tune you out. He was just thinking, forming his words. You forced yourself to keep your mouth shut, tamping down the urge to tell him not to blame himself.

Maybe all his self-flagellation would end up somewhere useful.

“I suppose I was no different, once I saw his world,” he muttered.

He gave a joyless laugh, a juddering exhale, and you flinched. The noise made you uncomfortable, it was so awkward, your teeth aching like you’d heard nails on a chalkboard.

“It’s funny that, in the end, neither of us were worthy. He abandoned his post, and I… refused to return to it.”

You rolled your shoulders, exhaling like Davos had. The view really was beautiful… but the idea of standing at the top of a mountain like this forever… just waiting…

“It is a little boring, I suppose. Guarding the Pass. Not as much drama as beating people up in NYC.”

Dangerous words, but you let them spill forwards anyway, trusting Davos to take them in good faith. He laughed again, this time deep and abrupt, and you smothered a smile.

If anyone had said that to him a year ago, you imagined he would have thrown them from the highest peak in K’un-Lun himself.

“It requires… patience and discipline. Apparently more than I possess.”

“You never got a fair shot,” you consoled, finally leaning into his shoulder. You felt his muscle tense against your own.

You remembered how he used to disappear, standing for hours on end at the pass as if he were doing the job, like a more solemn, grown-up version of a child pretending to be an astronaut or a doctor. Playing pretend.

With a flex of his hand, you could see thousands of memories flash across Davos’ face in seconds, a kind of mourning in his strong features before forming a fist once again.

You wondered if he still had the physical memory of all that power.

“Now I never will.”

The air on the mountain seemed to thin, a bird circling over the forest below, a black river of distant tarmac cutting through the green canopy and reminding you just how physically close to humanity you were hiding. You couldn’t hear the cars. They were too far away, miles and miles down the mountain. You could only make out the barest rustle of leaves, the heaviness of Davos’ breathing.

“I’m sorry,” you murmured, trying to conceal the sudden lump in your throat at the sight of tendons raising on the back of Davos’ hands.

Hands that had killed people. Hurt people. Threatened and kidnapped and wielded unknowably ancient power. His knuckles were forever split in places, the pads of his fingers rough from work and calloused from punches thrown at every obstacle in the damn world. You should be scared of him. You had been, you realised numbly, for so long.

He stretched out his fingers uneasily, fidgeting in a way you’d never noticed from him before the last few weeks. They were the hands of a killer, you reminded yourself. Colleen had told you he’d killed unarmed, over and over. He clenched his fist again, casually resting it on his knee as he looked out across the forest beyond your little vantage point.

You couldn’t tear your eyes away from his hands.

Hands that represented the last of his people and culture, that carried so much weight from the burden of it all they threatened to crack and fall apart like dust. But they were also hands that had rubbed your back after a hard day, that had draped over your waist in sleep and cooked food for you each night; protecting you relentlessly.

Your eyes widened as the realisation struck you to your core, your breath faltered in your chest. The fear you had harboured once harboured had slowly washed away, crumbling into the sea like porous cliffs, so subtle you hadn’t noticed until your fear had lost miles of ground.

When his strong hands formed a fist, or his whole body tensed like a startled animal, you felt nothing but protected. Safe. The realisation made your suddenly stomach curl with a strange sense of guilt. You worried when his skin split or his breath grew ragged, comforted him when he grew frustrated with himself while working out, gave him the blankets at night if he shivered.

When you finally managed to look up from his lap, Davos was watching you, a deep concern across his features.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his words almost pleading as he met your eyes.

“Fine,” you tried to smile, tried to persuade him it was the truth, while your mind was racing.

Your blood was hot in your ears, the wind picking up outside as the environment itself seemed determined to overwhelm you. It felt as though you were dizzy, the log beneath you hard and the air against your face raw and just… _intense._

Davos seemed unsure what to do – though he was far too wise to believe you when you claimed to be okay.

He pulled one arm around you, uncertain and light, not pulling you into him but instead providing some shelter with the warmth of his body on yours.

“Did you expect that I would be angry?” he asked suddenly, his voice raw and fearful of your answer.

You gulped.

“I thought you would be upset,” you chose your words carefully, and Davos knew it as you tiptoed around the answer, “but I was more… guilty. Feeling guilty for not telling you.”

Davos hummed, a question in the low note.

“I forgot, to be honest,” you confessed.

He made another noise, higher, lighter, closer to laugh. It made you smile too, as his lips tugged upwards to match.

“That’s okay.”

They were so plain, and yet his words were enough to wrench the last of your worry free from where it had lodged in your chest. He had passed some small test you were unaware you had set, the two of you now decidedly perched on the same page.

You let yourself sink into him a little, his one-armed embrace more natural now that you were closer to him. Your arm wrapped around his waist, and you felt the tense of his obliques against your hand before he relaxed again, his torso softening.

“It’s nice out here,” you hummed, resting your head on Davos’ chest.

“It is. Nature centres me. It is so much _bigger_ than we could ever hope to be. Yet it sustains us anyway. Nourishes us and adopts us.”

His voice rumbled through you, deep and silky, your very bones resonating as he spoke.

You felt a rush of shame at the heat which rose through you, biting your lip and quipping to try and distract from the attraction which was so, totally, inappropriate in that moment.

“Walmart nourishes us too.”

He groaned, rubbing his cheek against the crown of your head fondly, like a cat might nuzzle. You didn’t have the heart to complain about your hair, as his beard messed it up.

“I will admit, the convenience of canned chickpeas… has been a compelling argument for your lifestyle.”

“If only we could get takeaway out here,” you joked weakly, trying not to sound affected by his tone.

His finger was tracing over your covered shoulder, a gentle, repetitive motion which suddenly seemed to occupy every single nerve in your body.

“We should head back,” he muttered.

“My butt’s gone numb,” you agreed, enjoying how Davos ducked his head with an embarrassed smile.

“Then we certainly should head back.”

You smiled at how he brought the conversation back quietly into an area he was comfortable with. He withdrew his arm to stand, waiting as you followed him back the way you had come. You missed the warmth of his hand on you, missed being a safe under his wing and strangely _on his side_.

Davos was already walking, his boots softly padding along a non-existent path in the trees.

After a jog to catch up, you relished in Davos’ easy, lazy smile as you wound your arm around his for the duration of the journey back.

*

When you woke up the next morning there was a distinctive pressure in the air, humidity making the two of you start the day irritable and sweaty in each other’s arms.

The pressure finally broke around midday. The humidity released into a sudden heavy rainfall of biblical proportions, almost a relief as it forced Davos inside from his training and made you gather your papers to protect them from leaks in the battered structure of the building.

The rainstorm slowly developed into a brutal thunderstorm, forcing you to try and make dinner inside as the wind whistled outside and rain pounded a furious, arrhythmic beat against the cabin roof.

Cold breezes ghosted through the cracks in the walls of the cabin, window panes rattling and the curtains refusing to hang still as the elements put up a solid fight against your makeshift home. There was nothing to do but wait it out, and you had already bundled every warm fabric in the building onto the couch, where you could try and weather the storm.

Davos had run outside to pee, rushing back inside disgruntled and cold, his hair plastered to his face as he shivered.

You laughed and shuddered as he opened the cabin door to rush inside, closing and bolting it firmly behind him as you loudly whined at the gust of cold air which made you shiver, cold seeping into your very bones as Davos kicked his boots off and made a dash for the couch. With a giddy smile he pulled up the blanket which was wrapped around you, collapsing onto the couch beside you and joining in the cocoon of warmth you had made.

“Davos! You’re cold!”

“I am,” he grumbled, “and you’re warm.”

His skin was cool against yours as his exposed hands brushed across your arms, and you laughed through a shudder.

“I thought you never got cold?” you teased.

Davos hummed, shuffling closer into the cosiness of the blanket.

An especially brutal gust of wind seemed to make the very structure of the building shiver in sympathy with your bodies, and you looked anxiously up at the flexing ceiling.

“It’ll be okay,” Davos reassured you, his faux-irritation completely overridden by his sincere need to comfort you.

His hand rubbed across your arm before manhandling you a little to shift you into his side. You pulled the blanket back across both of you, resting your head against the soft muscle of his shoulder.

You felt uneasy, the forest around you suddenly alive and intimidating in a way you hadn’t expected. Branches broke outside and there was an eerie absence of animal sounds, instead the full ferocity of nature near-deafening you as the wind and rain fought outside.

“We’ll be okay,” Davos repeated, looking up at the ceiling with you as a patch of wetness began to soak the wood.

“Are you sure?” your whisper was muffled by the elements outside, but you knew Davos heard you.

“Sure.”

He was warm. So warm. Comfortable and soft and yet the gentle flex of his arm around you was strong and protective. You could smell him, his beard against your skin, and you took a moment to breathe in the scent of him as it mingled with the distinctive smell of earth and wet pine.

The rainwater forcing its way through the ceiling held Davos’ attention as his fingers absently stroked at your shoulder, the cold banished from both of your bodies entwined together.

You couldn’t believe you had gotten here, that Davos so different from the man you’d started an unwitting road trip with. Still, at the core, he was the same. But in his openness, his _trust_ , he couldn’t be more different.

He sought out your touch. He forgave your misleading him. He allowed himself to indulge in jokes and silliness and walking for the love of it.

He hugged you close to him when a rumble of thunder made both of you shudder.

Evenings on the couch like this were unusual, but when they did happen it was wonderful. They seemed to be growing increasingly common, as Davos grew more comfortable with you. Often when you had sat cuddled like this before, it had been after an early dinner, an engaging conversation, and Davos feeling especially clingy could result in the two of you sharing the couch needlessly close together.

He had taken to laying his arm behind you lately, as he was now, as if he was a hormonal teenage boy faking a yawn in the cinema. You couldn’t find it anything but endearing, knowing it was a sincere, natural extension of how protectively he postured himself around you.

As lightning flashed outside, barely mitigated by the curtains, you felt his hand tense on you.

For a beat you sat still, waiting to see if a fire broke out or a spooked woodland creature ran through the doors, both of you holding your breath as if the ceiling might cave in above you.

Davos was tensed, and you had no doubt that if some apocalyptic disaster happened, he would throw his body over yours in a heartbeat.

Inexplicably, despite the complete closeness of your body to his, you still wanted to be _closer_.

A distant crack of thunder made both of you gasp, the storm seeming to move further away even as the rain became more aggressive in its assault on the roof of your little home.

Davos pulled the blanket up to your chin, humming contentedly, and you couldn’t bear it anymore. His prettiness and protectiveness and loneliness… and you’d wanted him for so long… you could feel every breath he took like this. You wondered if he could feel your heart racing.

“I need to tell you something,” you murmured.

You had hardly realised you were speaking, so caught up in watching him.

“Anything,” his murmur seemed just as natural, your heart clenching as his voice rumbled beneath your body.

“I really want to kiss you.”

He blinked, shifting beneath you on the couch so minutely you wouldn’t have noticed if your bodies weren’t pressed against each other. You watched his face intently, desperate for any sign of what he might be thinking. He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, his dark lashes fluttering and his searching gaze watching your expression with just as much nervousness as you felt.

Davos released his bottom lip, tilting his neck slightly so you could look straight at him. You could kiss him from here, he was inches from your face, his arm around you. He wasn’t moving away. He wasn’t looking at you with disgust, he was _waiting_.

“Davos?” you whispered.

His eyes were so deep, his eyelashes splayed out and his eyes shining.

He didn’t reply.

You closed your eyes, steeling yourself for a rejection you weren’t sure you could make it through, and leant forwards to meet his lips.

He was soft, yet unmoving, his regrown stubble glancing your face as you kissed him. His arm tensed around you, his chest frozen, and for a moment you found yourself unable to think as his lips shifted experimentally against yours. A gentle groan in his throat pulled you back to reality, the grumble of the forest and the pounding of rain of the roof suddenly overwhelming to your ears as blood rushed to your face.

Both of you pulled back simultaneously, and your eyes snapped open as his eyelids lazily fluttered, seemingly dazed.

“Did you want to do that?” your voice betrayed your fear, snapping short his trance as he looked at you with shock. 

“Yes.”

His mouth closed firmly, his eyes still fixed on your face with an adoration which made your heart clench.

“Why?” you whispered.

“I wanted to see if it would help.”

Your heart sank, and you tried to not overreact as he remained frustratingly laconic. No explanation. No further words.

“Help what?”

You found yourself begging for some scrap of justification, your heart pounding in your chest and a tightness in your stomach from nervousness.

“If it would help with how I feel,” he admitted.

“Did it?”

He closed his eyes, taking deep, calming breaths. Outside a tree branch snapped, the forest itself being ripped apart by the storm outside.

His eyes snapped open at the sound, eyebrows raised.

“I don’t know. I feel… more. This ache.”

“What do you think it is?” you murmured.

You suspected you knew. There was a twin pain in your own chest, pounding in time with your racing heartbeat, alleviated only when you saw Davos smile and pull you closer to him.

“I think… being away from you hurts. I worry for your wellbeing more than my own. And those romance paperbacks by the bed certainly have a word for how this feels.”

You said nothing.

Davos didn’t seem embarrassed. He seemed out of his depth, if anything. Afraid, maybe. His fingers tapped across your back so lightly you could barely feel it, your hand still pressed to his chest between your bodies.

“How would they describe it?” you murmured.

He exhaled a shaky breath, his lip trembling as he looked down and back up towards you with a self-depreciating smile which melted your heart. And betrayed the inner conflict he felt.

He surprised you by answering with a sad chuckle, his eyes swimming with tears.

“I think you know.”

You nodded with understanding before the hand on your back grew firm, splayed out below your shoulder blades to pull your lips to his again. This time was intense. Intimate and active, with his hand rising to the back of your neck, making you groan this time.

Conscious of the cold air around you, you pushed him back, feeling him smirk against your lips as his back hit the arm of the couch. You pulled the blankets with you, letting him take your weight without even an exhale of complaint, huddling your warmth as the blankets pulled over your heads shut out the outside world.

In this cocoon of warmth and closeness, the storm was gone. The fear of the roof leaking, the threatening creak of the forest, the crack of thunder, all dwarfed by the warmth of your body over his. Even separated by layers and layers, you finally felt the closeness you had been craving, your heart finally eased by the acceptance and affection of his hand holding you to him. He refused to release your lips until you tapped your hand against his chest, a joking version of a _release_ symbol which had him laughing. Both of you panted as if he truly had pinned you on a Kung Fu mat after a long fight.

You could barely see him with the blankets separating you from the lantern light of the room, but you could feel the ghosting of his breath across your face, the tickle of his stubble against your face as you rest your cheekbone against his.

“Does this help the feeling?” you breathed.

“It feels right.”

With that, he kissed you again, making you giddy like a teenager in the back of a crappy car as his hand found its gentle resting place on your spine once more.

There was no one around. Kissing Davos felt like nothing but excitement. Closeness and sweetness yet something _forbidden_ , and a hint of _danger_ which his fierce overprotectiveness always brought to mind.

Getting too hot, you pulled the blankets from above your heads, relief rushing over you as the cold air flowed over your skin. Davos pulled the blankets close around both of your shoulders, and you braced yourself against his chest to get enough distance to see the expression on his face. It was dazed. And adoring. And confused. He looked strangely innocent as his eyes widened, the lantern light casting sharp shadows across his face.

“‘You okay?” you asked, trying to hide how much you _really wanted this to be okay._

“Completely okay.”

His voice was so gravelly, so dazed, you couldn’t help the tension and heat which built up between your hips. He rarely left you long enough to get your sexual frustration out, and the cold, bucket showers were no time to satisfy yourself. Besides, you knew, deep down, that you wanted _him._

You had never wanted him more.

And you had never been closer.

“Good,” you murmured, pulling your body up and letting one of your legs slip between his, Davos adjusting the blankets up your body again as he watched you in the electric lantern light.

Davos was smiling indulgently as you pressed your lips to his again, both of you groaning as you kissed him deeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope the slow burn is finally paying off 😊


	9. Hot Lips in a Cold Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For just a day, it seems like Davos and the reader might be careening towards something good.

You moaned against his lips, grinding down on his thigh and gripping his now-shaggy hair. Davos bucked up against you, groaning back, and you pulled back for just a second to admire how blissed-out he looked, body flopped against the couch and his eyes closed even after a few kisses.

After too long without your lips his eyes fluttered open and he just stared at you, blinking slowly. You ground down against his thigh once more, and his hands gripped your forearms in frustration, stilling you.

“Not on the couch,” he grunted, and you smiled your agreement.

Both of you moving to the bed in a fumbling, tripping mess, Davos half carrying you and the blankets so you wouldn’t lose a second of warmth or closeness.

He kissed you again as he laid you down, the blankets tangling frustratingly around your bodies. You reached for the top button of his trousers, his hands braced either side of you on the mattress, before pausing.

“Have you ever done this before?” you panted.

His eyes snapped open, taking a deep breath through his nose as he suddenly stared you down, eyes hardened.

You hadn’t meant anything by it, assuming the answer was _no,_ hoping you could ease him into everything with a gentle smile and a witty line. You wanted to take charge, see if he’d let you overpower him. His strong grip on your hip turned near-painful as he tensed.

When you whimpered from pain, he pulled his hands back as if your skin was hot metal, burning his fingertips. You were reminded of when he’d accidentally hurt you, fear in his eyes as he released you completely, as if he was expecting you to kick him away and wriggle out from beneath you. He lay beside you awkwardly, and you rolled over him, straddling his waist with a concerned frown.

Your pain was already gone. You waved off Davos’ apology unthinkingly, confused when his stricken expression didn’t disappear as he stared up at you. You leant forward to kiss him, to convince him it was _okay_ , and he turned his head away.

You stayed firmly straddling him, frowning at his horror, wanting to caress away the sudden lines in his forehead.

“I’ve done this before,” he told you, suddenly, solemnly.

“Wow, get it, Davos!” You teased.

It must have been in New York. Somewhere deep down, you secretly felt a spark of jealousy that he had fucked someone else before, hoping your body might be the first one he explored. It was unfounded, though. You tried to run a finger up his jaw, joking, but he gently pulled your fingers away.

He flopped his head back against the mattress and you followed him, curving closer over his body and you gently cupped his jaw, suddenly hit by a second-hand wave of sadness.

“That’s okay, you’re allowed to have, y’know, had sex before,”

“Perhaps others are. I shouldn’t have,” he sighed, looked away, “It was not… for the reasons you might think.”

“What do you mean?”

Davos shook his head.

 _“The Iron Fist must remain above all others. Chaste. Pure. Without wife, family or friends,”_ he echoed, words you’d heard before. Coming from Davos’ mother. You heard an eerie hint of her in his tone. Danny would groan over those words back in K’un-Lun, back when he’d try to flirt with you and be scolded for it. He’d always waved the rules away when Davos reminded him of them pointedly, Danny embarrassed to discuss celibacy in front of you.

He had thought the rules were unfair. Davos had taken them to heart. You could see the shame making his body cramp up, pulling him in on himself. You held him close, feeling him start to resist you.

The words in your head felt forbidden so you whispered them, hoping your touch might negate their cruelness:

“You’re not the Iron Fist, Davos.”

He pulled away from you, manoeuvring you to set you down on the bed, frustration and distress evident in his jerky movements.

He headed for the bathroom door, the only other place he could hide from you without braving the storm.

“No! Davos… we talk, remember? None of this _running,_ or _punching stuff_. Talk to me.”

You rushed to your feet when he paused, stopping when you were stood just a few inches from him. You had no idea what to do from here, but you were shivering from the cold.

“Come lay down with me…”

He walked like a man being sent to the gallows, trudging. You tried not to feel offended. He hesitantly joined you as you lay on top of the blankets, pulling one over yourself for warmth. Davos stayed uncovered, hands behind his head as he started up at the ceiling, while you curled on your side towards him.

“What just happened?” you prompted gently.

You didn’t understand. New York had changed him but this… this was something else.

“I’m not mad at you, whatever it is… it’s not a big deal. I’ve had sex with other people. It’s completely _normal_.”

You couldn’t place the meaning behind his jaw clenching, the sudden shake in his hands. His shirt was riding up over his stomach, but you forced your attention away from how much you wanted him.

“I traded my body for the power of the Iron Fist.”

“I don’t follow, Davos,” you coaxed him softly, sensing the story on the tip of his tongue.

“Rather, I traded my body to blackmail someone. A friend of Joy’s. For the bowl which could enable me to become imbued with the power of the Iron Fist.”

Even after spending so long in K’un-Lun, Davos would occasionally say things which baffled you. You took a moment to process, still confused. He continued, voice struggling under the weight of his emotion.

“My… coupling with her was filmed. She handed over a priceless, ancient Tibetan Singing Bowl in exchange for Joy keeping the footage private.”

Your stomach dropped.

“Danny’s friend Joy?”

Danny had mentioned her often enough, she was a prominent feature in his old proudly-recited stories from childhood, and you couldn’t imagine the sweet girl he’d recalled forcing Davos to do _that_. It was too absurd.

You watched Davos carefully, trying your best to decipher how he felt about it all.

 _Not good_ , seemed an understatement.

“You had sex with someone for a bowl?”

He frowned, hiding his face from you against the covers.

“She was called Mika,” his voice cracked a little, and your heart ached as he broke your eye contact.

“You did what you thought was best,” you tried to soothe, but it came out as a question.

_Do you regret it?_

“It… it was what I needed to. I couldn’t kill for it. Joy… she wouldn’t…”

The bed creaked as he fidgeted, his half of his face pressed into his bicep in distress, the roof creaking above your heads and the air around you still arctic-cold as the storm and the building fought.

You got up silently, cringing as your socked feet touched the cold floor, and stoked the fire. The new log you added created a tall flame, illuminating the cabin in flickering orange for a few long moments, and you recoiled from the heat.

On the bed, Davos didn’t move.

Brushing your hands off on your jeans, you closed the grate and sat on the bed.

“I knew I shouldn’t have done it. I’ve broken so many of my vows, bent my morals to obtain my what I wanted, my birth right…”

You frowned as he seemed to blink himself out of his confession, looking up at you as though he had just realised where he was.

Without another word his hand was reaching for your jeans, swiftly pushing you onto your back with the other, straddling your body with an absolute control you knew he _needed_ just to feel safe.

“We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want…”

“I do,” he reassured you.

At least, he tried to reassure you. His tone was too low, too intentionally harsh, when you knew he was far more nervous than you were.

Everything in you screamed that this was wrong. The jerky movements as Davos took his own shirt off roughly, the methodical way he positioned you on the bed, the command which he seemed not to want, but that he assumed he needed to possess.

It wasn’t right.

You let him do what he wanted, let him strip you down, his thumbs rubbing the gooseflesh which sprung up over your body from a combination of the cold and the _strangeness_ of it all.

He paused at your underwear, just _staring_ at you

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“You keep asking me that,” he grumbled, his gave unwavering on your lower stomach.

You tried not to twitch under his unblinking scrutiny.

“Because I don’t want to have you do something you’ll regret,” you told him calmly, trying to ignore the intense heat in your core and the aching in your chest as gooseflesh ran its way up and down your limbs.

He huffed in frustration, and you shivered as his warm breath danced across your chilled skin.

“I can make my own choices,” he insisted.

You frowned, reaching out to stroke his cheek with your thumb, his tensed jaw relaxing under your touch. The rain seemed to lighten up on the roof, even as the roar of the wind through the trees grew more ferocious outside the thin glass of the windows.

An agitated shift of his shoulders drew your focus back to Davos, and the shaggy mane of jet black hair as the top of his head hovered over your body.

“I know, but I prefer having sex with someone who actually wants to be there.”

You could see Davos mentally stumble. It made his eyes grow wide as he moved back, his posture physically softening as he looked up at you. His forearms rested either side of your thighs, his fingers splayed over the covers of the bed.

“I do want to be here,” he told you earnesty.

Davos sounded vulnerable. Weakened, in a way you knew was authentic solely because he never let his guard down if he could help it. You’d broken his icy exterior.

You raised your eyebrows in challenge, daring him to put the pieces together himself as his warm eyes met yours. The cabin door rattled as a gust of wind whistled through the trees.

“So I should ‘act like it’?” he guessed, imitating your accent and making you suddenly laugh.

“Yep.”

You reached up to stroke at his jaw, and he smiled softly as your thumb fondly stroked over his cheekbone. His hand reached up to meet yours, pulling your hand from his face and interweaving your fingers together, holding your hand as he pulled it back to the mattress.

“Happy?” he asked.

“Ecstatic,” you reassured gently.

With fresh vigour he straddled you, kissing you as though the world was ending and there was nowhere else he would rather be.

When he pulled away for air, lips swollen and glossy, there was a question in his eyes.

“Better,” you panted.

Davos seemed in the room suddenly, his hands firmer on your body and his expressions more intense. His eyes seemed focussed, unlike earlier, and you were overcome by just how charming he could be in his paradoxical self-assuredness and inexperience.

His hands felt cold under against your bare skin, and you realised absently it was far too chilly for this, but you didn’t care. His trousers were still on, even Davos’ skin raised with the cold, the warmth of the fire offering a little respite.

You found yourself warming up quickly as he reverently explored your chest, his intense kisses growing gentler as they strayed from your mouth, meandering down your body until they were tantalisingly close to the waistband of your underwear. In turn, your fingers were in his hair, tracing gently down his neck, straying to his exposed pecs before drifting back into safer territory.

You sensed anything too bold or rough would startle him, instead letting your touches move slowly and deliberately, like you were approaching a nervous wild animal.

You blindly traced his tattoo as he kissed you once more, pulling away to stare into your eyes as if confirming you were _real_.

The two of you just stared for so long you feared the night might have stagnated, reached a brick wall which Davos thought he could scale, but found too tall, too scary.

Yet the lust in his eyes never faltered, his lip trembling slightly as he breathed raggedly from arousal rather than exertion.

He held himself apart from you, making sure you couldn’t feel how turned on he was against your stomach, but you reached a hand between your bodies anyway. Davos clenched his jaw as you brushed his crotch, feeling he was definitely hard for a brief touch before your fingers delved beneath your own underwear.

It was a dare, to stare into his eyes, to play with yourself with one hand while the other rested on the soft muscle which stretched between his neck and his shoulder, feeling it tense as he craned his neck to looked between you.

With a muffled groan, your movements grew more forceful on your own skin, a silent dare on your lips for him to take over.

Instead, he unzipped his own trousers, taking himself in hand as he straddled you.

There was a glint in his eye as he lazily stroked himself. As soon as he saw the gentle smile stretch across your face, he moved back to standing. You felt your heart beating in your throat as you realised this was his way of telling you ‘ _ready’,_ his hint to continue. You took a deep breath.

You pulled your underwear over your ass, raising your hips. Without consulting you Davos helped gently tugged the underwear the rest of the way down your legs until it was discarded onto the floorboards.

For just a moment, he took in the sight of your now naked body. His own trousers had only been opened, roughly tugged down his hips. Then, he let himself fall forwards.

He easily manoeuvred himself, utilitarian in tugging you across the mattress until your hips would meet his at the right angle, and you gulped as you silently let yourself be manhandled.

A flash of lightning outside made you twist to the stare at the windows, the thin curtains already back to covering nothing but the view of darkness outside, rain slapping against the glass.

“Are you okay?” Davos asked, his voice barely louder than the sound of the rain.

You looked back to him with wide eyes, wanting to apologise for your quick distraction, but stunned to silence by the sheer affection in his eyes.

It wasn’t lust. Or a possessiveness. It was something so terrifyingly close to _love_ you found yourself unable to breathe.

“Sorry, yeah, uh… carry on,” you told him.

He narrowed his eyes in quiet concern at your awkwardness, and you fought off shivering. You jumped as his cold hand touched your shoulder, seeing him deflate with a self-depreciating smile.

“Sorry,” you murmured.

Davos shook his head, reaching for a blanket and pulling it across your bare torso. You took it with an apologetic smile, pulling your arms free and internally wincing at the sheer awkwardness of it.

Despite it all, you still wanted him.

And there would be other times.

This didn’t have to be perfect, you were happy no matter what.

It would just be the _first_ time.

That was enough.

You curled up to touch his hand, holding it. Davos let you pull him forwards by the arm, pressing your lips together in a now-comforting kiss, feeling him groan into your open mouth. When he finally pulled back, you wrapped your legs around his waist and crossed your feet, tugging his hips closer to your own until you could feel him against you.

“Ready?” he asked, hands finding purchase cupping your thighs.

He stood over you, ready to push into you with a quiet confidence which suited him entirely but also surprised you. You nodded quietly, gooseflesh on your skin distracting you as every moment let the cold in.

Davos looked at you with pure adoration as he took you, his mouth hanging open and his fingers scrabbling for grip, experimenting with grasping different places on your body. His grunts echoed your groans as he fell into a pattern.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was Davos. So that was enough.

*

The thin morning light outside was barely muted by the cabin curtains, and you could instantly tell you’d woken up far earlier than usual. The rain had stopped, the air humid and the cabin cool, the world outside eerily quiet as you blinked awake.

You still felt sleepy, groaning at the pleasant stretch which counteracted the ache of your body.

Then you realised Davos was beside you, his firm body creating a second divot in the old mattress, stock still on his back as you suddenly froze mid-yawn.

He was awake. Usually he would be starting his morning routine, and you wondered if he had slept in, but his position was so unnatural there was no way he was asleep. He had the posture of a standing man somehow, his spine straight and his face directly to the ceiling.

His eyes were closed, but you knew better than to believe he was still asleep. He was holding his breath.

You relaxed back carefully, finishing your stretch strangely, one of your hands falling to rest lightly on his bicep as you wriggled back onto your side, facing him as you had in sleep.

Davos gave you no reaction.

“Morning,” you echoed his usual greeting, and it sounded strange with the morning-deep tone of your voice.

Still there was nothing from the man beside you, even as you shifted your naked hips, feeling the ghost of his strong fingers where the skin was tender.

Your heart dropped in your chest as his silence stretched on.

Was he ashamed? Did he regret it? Had you pressured him into doing more than he’d been comfortable with? Each question made your panic swell, his unresponsiveness unnerving. His chest was rising and falling, but not in sleep. He was certainly awake.

Meditating, maybe?

“‘You ignoring me?”

Finally, Davos sighed. His eyes opened and he squinted against the light of the room, and you tried not to reflect on how he had opened the curtains every other morning you had been here.

How he had fetched water, washed up the cooking pot, done his morning training all before you woke up.

You knew now those were all acts of service. Things he did for _you_. Protecting you was the way he rationalised this strange new situation. Now, without those things, you wondered how he could possibly continue to hold himself together.

You’d certainly known the panic and the fear and the complete collapse of your sense of self which came with losing your path. It had come when you’d lost your job. When you’d arrived back from K’un-Lun to learn of Danny and Davos’ fates in the outside world. You had felt your path pulled from under you the night Davos made you his accomplice, and your life started outside the law. When you’d settled in his cabin, you had accepted the strange detour your journey had taken.

Now had to be one of those points for Davos, where he saw the road run out ahead of him, and looked around for some dirt track or turn-off to steer him towards a new goal. Losing the Iron Fist – the first and the second time – had both been big changes for him. You wondered if sex was a U-turn on the path he had expected to tread.

It wasn’t like in New York, for his plan with Joy. This wasn’t utilitarian, a means to an end. The night before had been for pleasure, self-motivated and completely against everything he’d been taught. You felt your chest tightening at the memory of how affectionate he’d been, completely genuine and in the moment, checking in with you and chasing your pleasure as much as his. That made his silence hurt all the more.

As he stared up to the ceiling, his eyebrows drawn together in worry and his body naked beneath the old covers of the bed, you wondered if he was mentally rerouting his path.

He’d broken yet another steadfast rule of his upbringing.

You rolled your neck, frustration and fear competing in your mind, both emotions equally matched.

 _Too early for tears,_ you chided yourself.

Davos wasn’t pretending to be asleep anymore, but he was certainly ignoring you.

“I’m gonna ache today,” you joked, rolling closer to him, your fingers ghosting over his bicep squeezing the muscle teasingly, before letting your arm rest on him.

He didn’t move away, nor did he respond to your touch.

You sighed.

“Davos…”

“It wasn’t like that last time,” he declared suddenly.

His voice was gravelly from sleep, curt from emotion, as his gaze refused to falter from the beams of the ceiling. Outside the birds were beginning a morning chorus, and you rubbed the sleep from your eyes, trying to wake up and be present for this moment.

 _I’ll bet,_ you wanted to joke.

He didn’t seem in the mood for jokes.

“No?” you asked quietly.

“It…. Felt like nothing.”

“What?”

His words hung heavy in the air and you tried not to let yourself get emotional. It felt like rejection, how he ignored you, naked and in bed with him, curled around his arm. You were barely touching him, only your knuckles on his bicep, but you could still see him swallow thickly. His mind was somewhere else, and you tried not to feel hurt.

“With her,” he added.

You stopped holding your breath, an exhale of relief.

“And last night felt like… something?”

You were almost afraid to ask, half-expecting the words to wash over him unheard. Davos bit his lip, and you realised he was blinking away tears, his Adam’s apple moving as he gulped again.

He didn’t speak, nodded slightly before tears started to fall.

“That’s good,” you promised gently. “It felt like something for me too.”

He nodded again, a tear slipping down the side of his face as he pressed his eyes closed again, and curled onto his side. He didn’t brush you off as you shuffled towards his back, one arm flung around him as your chest pressed against his back, your foot hooked around his. The combined heat of your body was nice, as the duvet slipped and the chill of the room threatened to make you shiver.

“Something good,” you reiterated.

Davos barely fidgeted, reaching only to adjust your arm to lay more comfortably over him, and you felt a rush of acceptance as he seemed to want your touch. You tried to ignore the silent tears slipping down his cheeks, sensing he didn’t want to talk about it.

Eventually you drifted off, hoping perhaps he might sleep some more too, content that he was even letting you comfort him.

You woke up alone.

*

The bed was strangely cool, and it took you a moment to even realise Davos was missing beside you. He wasn’t far away, though, his jacket hanging open to expose his bare chest, his eyes still a little red from his tears earlier. Hours had passed, the sun established in the sky and the air far warmer than the night before. You felt better, more awake, as you sat up naked, bringing the covers with you. When he heard you move he padded across the room, bringing food as he joined you.

Unprompted, he confessed:

“I think, the… the film with Mika… was the start of it. The first time I broke the rules I was raised on for something truly selfish. And I hated it. I couldn’t eat for days. My Qi was off, I thought I was being punished.”

The words were planned. You wondered how long he’d spent formulating them, waiting to tell you after his own revelation. It was a small honour, to hear him confess something personal to you so plainly.

The mattress dipped as he sat on his side of the bed, and for a moment you caught yourself staring at the lines of his chest, at the elegant movement of his scarred hands as he passed you a plate.

You took it silently, settling back into bed and resting it on your lap. Davos stayed sat by your waist, looking guilty as he stared at your collarbones, avoiding your eyeline.

“Do you think you were punishing yourself?” you prompted quietly, surprised to see Davos nod without a second thought.

He must have been awake for hours, his solemnity a textbook sign he had been meditating. He was cooler than you, his hands making you jump as they had brushed yours, and you wondered if he had already been outside.

“What we did… is not something I should have done. Or, that I should have done in K’un-Lun. It is confusing, to me. But I wanted it. I’m… a different man now.”

“But you wanted to do it?”

He nodded.

“I did. I… I don’t know why, but… I did.”

There was a lump in your throat, your breakfast uneaten as you stared down at it.

You knew why.

You wondered if, maybe, he did too.

“I really care about you,” you told him, so plainly you blushed as you heard yourself speak.

The speed at which his worried brown eyes met yours told you that he felt the same, even if the words never left his slightly-parted lips.

“And that’s why,” you finished, “for me, at least.”

Ambiguous, and yet it seemed enough for Davos as he dropped his head and mumbled:

“We did that, because we care about each other. Because I care about you.”

 _And because it feels good,_ you wanted to add glibly. It was too early, too sensitive. You could still remember the feel of him inside you, his hands on your thighs. If you made a joke this whole fragile world might shatter, the cabin roof falling in around you even after it had survived the storm. The trees themselves being felled by some force bigger than either of you if you mentioned the word which taunted you each time you looked into his eyes.

“Yeah,” you told him.

 _Name it,_ you dared yourself. _Address it._

“Sex is something you do to show people you care about them,” you reminded him gently, a slight edge to your words, “or at least it should be.”

You could sense a sadness in him at your words, and you almost regretted them. But this was helping, you reasoned. This was helping.

And next time would be better.

There would be a next time.

You could be more comfortable and he would be less guilty and the sex would be even better.

And maybe you could both confess how you really, _really_ felt.

“Like the water,” Davos declared suddenly.

“Hm?”

You processed his words a few moments after he said them, your eyes drifting to the ancient bucket sat on the countertop. The handle had started to warp from his daily trips to the lake, but he’d never complained as it hurt his hands.

“What do you mean?”

You knew.

Damn it, you knew.

Davos didn’t answer your question, seeming to realise that you had understood. You started eating slowly, surprised that he didn’t leave your side, staring instead at the peeling paint above your head.

Both of you were trapped in your own heads, distracted by trying to quieten the nerves and concerns which raced around your heads.

By the time you remembered to thank him for the food, your plate was empty.

He nodded politely, never needing praise or thanks, and your heart clenched a little at the thought of all those things you hadn’t ever thought about before. Buckets of water and split logs and hours and hours of foraging, breakfasts where he _tried his best_ and dinners where he snuck you the larger portion.

You’d always thought the asymmetry of your roles here was because of some macho need to be a provider he had, or part and parcel of his training.

Now you had started to recognise them as something else: protectiveness. Caring.

Davos cleared his throat as your mind drifted from the conversation.

“How’s the book?” he changed the subject, and you smiled tightly.

“It’s… going. As written as I can get it without, y’know, more paper,” you laughed, and Davos’ lip curled up in wry amusement.

“I have no doubts – it will be brilliant.”

You shrugged. Knowing how much it meant to him only made you more nervous of Davos reading your work, seeing his home through your eyes when he was the expert and you were merely an observer. You really didn’t care if the rest of the world like it, only that he did.

The wandering path of thoughts about publishing and editing led your mind somewhere else, as Davos traced the creases in the blankets with his finger.

“I wonder what’s going on in the outside world,” you mused.

“Nothing good, I’m sure.”

Davos shrugged, and you suddenly wondered if he even _cared_. The so-called outside world hadn’t given him anything good, hadn’t offered him a safe home or friendly faces. He didn’t seem to have anyone else left he could trust, wasn’t proud of what he had done.

You had created a tiny little bubble up in the cabin, and you were suddenly struck by how he had created a surrogate K’un-Lun. All around were scrap-fabric sparring partners, nature now a cruel master to him in the place of his Shifu.

That left you, as all that he had to represent his family and community.

There was a lump in your throat as you watched Davos gather your clothes, bundling them up unashamedly and offering them to you so you wouldn’t have to step naked into the cold morning air.

His eyes trailed across your body as you changed, preserving as much warmth as you could, and you caught him mirroring your smirk.

“Later,” you flirted.

Davos seemed suddenly called out, ducking his head and looking away, that cheeky smile never leaving his lips.

*

“We should meditate,” Davos offered, drying his hands off from repairing the storm-battered porch handrail. He had left the front door open as you both worked – him on repairs after the storm, you on your book – listening as you shouted complaints of boredom and eyestrain after the first few hours.

You knew it amused him, how grumpy or petulant you would get over minor issues.

 _“Westerners,”_ you’d heard him grumble.

This time, it wasn’t your fault. You truly were at a sticking point, ready to put the whole book together but without the resources to write it. Each corner of the cabin had been searched for something new to write on, unlikely candidates like fabrics and wooden surfaces tested with your biro. It was no good.

The book would have to remain muddled inside your head and notebook pages until further notice.

You quickly dismissed the meditation idea. Usually you would only end up focussing on your butt hurting against the forest floor, or feeling cold, or the deep, whiskey-smooth texture of Davos’ voice as he tried to guide your meditation but only succeeded in distracting you. It wasn’t your fault his relaxed voice sounded so sinfully _good_.

Instead, you thought of the car, sat outside during the storm last night, and stationary for far too long. It was important to make sure it still worked. For safety. And because you would quite like to leave and buy more food and notebooks soon.

“How much fuel do we have?” you asked, as Davos approached and sat on the floor opposite you at your makeshift-coffee-table-desk.

“Full tank,” Davos shrugged.

You bit your lip.

“We should turn the engine over. Charge up my phone, too. Then we could find out what’s happening.”

It was a strangely big deal, a deviation from your daily set of tasks, to dig out your car-keys from your grab bag and make the short walk with Davos through the trees to your muddy Chevvy. Both of you clambered into the front seats, and you held your breath as you turned the key.

The engine seemed to shudder for a moment, taking a couple of goes to turn over in protest at being left unused, but you exhaled a sigh that the battery wasn’t flat.

“Quick drive?”

Davos shrugged.

He plugged your phone into the centre console as you drove slowly around the mountain roads, going only far enough to find a turning point and return to your parking spot, hoping the engine would appreciate a little bit of crude use.

“Phone,” Davos noted as you drove back, the screen lighting up with enough charge to read through your messages.

And fuck, there were a lot.

Danny and Colleen stood out the most, a dozen messages from each of them.

As you parked up and read through them, Davos looking over at the screen from the passenger side, your heart sank.

_Plane can be arranged. Call me asap. -- Danny_

Two days ago.

The previous messages were more of the same, spanning the time since you had last braved turning your phone on, and Colleen asking you to get in contact with Davos’ _suddenly-concerned_ brother.

You turned the device off wordlessly, in a vain attempt to save battery, as you and Davos left the car again. Both of you had seen. Both of you knew what this meant.

“That’s good,” you broke the silence, branches cracking beneath your feet on the walk back.

Davos hummed his agreement.

From there, the day became something you couldn’t control. Time seemed to accelerate as you phoned Danny, the call crackly from the long distance as he picked up immediately, awkwardly greeting you before you handed Davos the device, and suddenly you were walking from your temporary home which had grown oddly permanent, letting Davos catch up with his brother, letting them hash out the details of whatever plan would shift your entire life yet. It was being discussed without you.

You had woken up naked that morning in the same bed. You could still feel Davos’ lips on your tender skin, the stretch in your hip flexors and the desperately hot ache inside of you from the night before.

Before you knew it you were sat numbly on a fallen log far enough from the cabin that you could barely make out the firepit where you had eaten almost every night, sharing more and more of yourself with Davos.

_Were both of you leaving?_

_Where was he going?_

_What did Danny mean ‘plane’?_

“This is good,” you had tried to enthuse before making the call, your voice flat and openly disappointed, as much as you tried to hide it.

Davos gave you a concerned look.

“It is. Everything can go back to normal!”

Your voice had sounded strained, your chest tight, as you hit dial on Danny’s contact and passed over the phone. Davos had watched silently, his stance wide like a soldier, his trepidation betrayed as he chewed on his thumb nail.

It was hard to read him, despite all the progress the two of you had made. He could flip his vulnerability off like a switch, and he had definitely begun to put up a defence as soon as Danny’s name had appeared in tiny font on your glowing phone screen.

Without realising, you were walking back to the cabin, sitting in the familiar groove of the log he’d dragged to the fire pit for seating almost a whole season ago. The door was open. You hadn’t meant to leave it ajar, but the lock was useless and the wind was aggressive, making you shudder as you were left out in the cold.

Through the window, you could see Davos’ unguarded expression as he sat on the couch, your phone pressed to his ear.

You could see him playing with one of the little wooden dragons he’d carved all those months ago, tapping it against the table in an irregular beat as his brother spoke, his voice too dulled by the phone for you to hear.

You’d missed Danny a little, but now wasn’t the time to reconnect. You stayed outside, trying not to listen to their conversation, but Davos’ voice carried. And you couldn’t resist. You stood and crept closer to the door with the intention of grabbing your coat, but quickly paused.

He was talking about you. He had to be.

“She’s good. We’ve grown quite used to each other, I think.”

Danny was speaking on the other end of the call, as Davos’ tapping continued. You backed away from the porch, hearing Davos gruffer than you recognised.

He’d been like that when he’d first left prison, you remembered, on those first few weeks you’d travelled together. The pair of you had changed so gradually you’d hardly noticed it until Davos returned to his blunt old ways on the phone to his brother.

“No, that sounds perfect.”

His voice carried so clearly you could’ve overheard half a mile away, you convinced yourself as you lurked near the cabin. He’d never been one to mumble. Not when it mattered. And he was clothed.

Your heart dropped as you heard Davos again, realising the discussion about you wasn’t over.

“Just one ticket. I’m sure she needs to return to her normal life.”

The _tap, tap_ of that wooden figuring on the coffee table was so distinct, you expected Danny could hear it too.

"I’m sure. She doesn't need me and I don’t need her, so its all for the best"

The words collided with your chest like arrows piercing your breastplate, ramming straight through your ribs and into your heart.

Davos’ tone was dismissive, almost _bored_ , as he discussed the logistics of finally being free from your _loathsome_ company.

The night before he’d been inside of you, whispering words so loving you had only the feel of his strong hands on your flesh to convince yourself you were awake.

Suddenly you had to rest a hand on the outside wall of the cabin which had been your home for so long, blood in your ears as your tiny world seemed to crash down around you.

For all the time you’d been cooped up together in the middle of nowhere, you’d convinced yourself that you were his whole world. That everything he did was for you, that he’d truly developed feelings for you.

 _He’d do that for anyone_ , a sinister part of your psyche insisted, _you just happened to be the only one out here_.

The first person who’d cared enough to listen to his problems. To comfort him, to give him a second chance after everything he’d done.

The first person who wanted to fuck him, to give him attention and care about more than his power.

You’d forgiven him again and again. Trusted him, even when everyone else told you not to.

Without realising it, you were backing further from the cabin, your feet unsteady on tree roots and your vision blurred with tears as you choked down sobs, refusing to hear any more of your worst fears carelessly admitted through a long-distance phone call to Danny.

Had you really given up so much of your life for these men?

You were an _idiot._

The cabin was out of sight now, the woods closing in, becoming thicker and more wild, blocking your path back.

Good riddance.

Fuck him.

Some small part of you wondered if you were overreacting. If he was putting up a front for his brother. But the result would be the same.

You were no longer useful to him, and he wanted to be a plane-ride away from you.

This part of the forest was new to you, not frequently trodden like the routes to foraging spots or the lake or the car. It was nice, thick and untouched by human presence, your only comfort a keen sense of which direction you had come from.

Where that stupid fucking rickety cabin was.

You wanted to burn the place down, to take a stick from the fire and hurl it towards that stupid derelict porch, watch the aged wood go up in flames. You wanted to torch the bed where he’d fucked you. The couch where you’d cuddled and laughed and cried. It could all burn down, all your research, the photos, the last two and a half years of your life, with it.

Slowly the forest sucked the fight out of you, hours passing as your feet ached and brambles occasionally tore at you until your meandering path met a road. The rough loose stone beneath your boots was hard walking, but as the sun set it was a comfort to know you could be certain of your journey back, the darkness of the woods only adding to your misery as it became an agent of fear.

Fear atop your fear that Davos would abandon you soon.

Fear that this was all a ruse.

That he had never cared for you beyond companionship and a quick way out of the repercussions of his actions.

With each foot placed carefully before the other, you found yourself unable to recognise the person who had been so trusting and loving towards Davos, so obsessed with his touch and approval and returned affections.

The cruel elements, the frustratingly slippery ground underfoot, only made you grumpier.

Eventually you had ranted inside your own head for so long it turned from anger to fear to sadness, and you had to pause at the sight of the cabin, far ahead, the turning marked only by your stupid car which would take Davos from you.

You just stood there, tears falling down your face, feet aching inside your boots.

_This cannot be happening._

*

When you returned it was because you had become trembling-cold, hypothermia just barely seeming a worse fate than approaching to the smoky fire Davos was stoking, the too-green wood only just lit.

He looked shocked to see you.

“Are you okay?” he demanded, standing and taking steps towards you which made you pause in your tracks.

You forced a weak smile, fighting the urge to back away.

“I think I’m heading to bed early. I’m exhausted. Did Danny say anything interesting?”

Davos turned back to the fire, stoking it, thickening the nauseating smoke which rose from the crackling wood, tickling your throat and burning your eyes.

You couldn’t wait to be away from here, with a shower and a real kitchen and real _people._ Around anyone but Davos.

“We can go. My flight to Nepal is midnight tomorrow, so I think we need to leave at sunrise. It’s a shipping flight, some seedy trader he knows.”

_Tomorrow._

_Oh, god. Tomorrow._

Your whole life would be uprooted tomorrow. Davos, the core pillar which held everything you now knew together, would vanish as if he had never even been there, letting the roof crumble in above you.

Irrationally, you cursed yourself for ever remembering that damn phone existed.

For ever trying to help him.

For ever contacting Danny and Collen or going to K’un-Lun or staying for longer because you _loved it there so much._

You could picture your next published by-line now: ‘Autoethnography Ruined My Life’

_And broke my heart._

You couldn’t remember anguish like this. Not even when you learned of the loss of K’un-Lun. Davos’ imprisonment. None of it held a candle to looking across the land you had shared for months into Davos’ eyes, knowing he was leaving. You were dumbstruck, left standing outside the cabin where you had shared a bed with him, where you had told stories and grown as people and divulged your greatest fears and vulnerabilities.

Scrabbling for words, you tried to hide your tears, the dark aiding you as your eyes began to shine.

“No papers?” you asked.

Davos shook his head, and you nodded in understanding.

“I wrote the airfield down, in the back of one of your journals. If that’s okay.”

You nodded mutely, feeling strangely irritated at the intimacy of him marking your personal notes. You wouldn’t have minded that this morning. Now, the thought of him scribbling down his escape plan in your journal made you want to rip the whole damn page out.

Davos said nothing more than a gentle goodnight, giving you such a sweet smile you were stopped in your tracks, stumbling a little as you wandered inside to get ready for bed.

Damn him.

You wanted to kiss him.

Damn him.

Damn him for being so sweet, for tricking you into thinking he was innocent and needed your protection. For using you, up until the second he didn’t need you anymore. You’d be his lift to the airfield, and then you would just be someone he ‘doesn’t need’.

What about you?

What were you meant to do, while he flew back to the Himalayas for some unknown reason?

The worst part wasn’t that he ‘didn’t need’ you. It was that somehow, along the way, in some bizarre twist of roles, you’d grown to need him. Anywhere you moved to would feel unsafe without his guard. You wanted him to keep cooking for you every night, insisting you ate, refusing to open the curtains before you’d woken naturally because he didn’t want you losing a second of sleep.

You wanted him wherever you were, challenging you, refusing to let you write a single word which wasn’t true about K’un-Lun. You wanted him to help leave the memory of that city alive.

Now, the thought of beginning your book left a bitter taste in your mouth.

So, as you’d feared, you had truly wasted the two and a half years since you’d met him.

You couldn’t sleep, curling into the blankets, selfishly wrapping yourself up. You tried to feel warm, safe, but your shivering wasn’t because of the cold.

It was almost an hour later as Davos crawled into bed beside you that night, smelling faintly of open fire cooking and the musk of sweat you’d grown unexpectedly fond of. Now the scent of him made you feel stifled, suffocated. He reached out for you, as if by instinct, letting you keep the blankets but wanting you in his arms.

For one last night.

As if in sleep, you didn’t react. His touch on you was uncomfortable without your cooperation, and you heard the shift of the mattress as he withdrew his arm.

“Were you okay earlier?” he asked softly through the darkness, “I wondered where you got to.”

You didn’t reply, and he sighed softly.

Regret forced your mind back to when you’d first invited him under the covers. You wished you’d never bothered, left him on that couch, far away.

Where he couldn’t hurt you.

This bed had been host to so much. To moments of sheer elation, scant few moments of pleasure, disbelief that a man like Davos could be changed, softened, by how much he cared for you.

Your disbelief had been right.

Davos always heralded the value of gut reaction, it’s importance in self-defence and in life. In some twisted way, he had been right.

Even as Davos rolled onto his back and faintly snored, your mind was spinning out of control.

You would have to pack tomorrow.

Your clothes, journals, all seemed so natural here now. But you weren’t coming back here alone.

You couldn’t.

Davos hadn’t asked what you were doing once he was gone. Of course he hadn’t. Why should he care?

You certainly weren’t coming back here. Not to this way of living which you couldn’t cope with alone. You had done nothing wrong, legally. You hoped. You could… skulk around in motels. Find a new job. Rebuild the life that Davos and his stupid need to _run_ had crumbled around you.

You loathed that you cared so much. It wouldn’t have hurt this much, you realised, if he hadn’t made you care for him so much.

Made you _love him_.

Tears finally spilled from your eyes, hot and itchy, almost burning as they fell undeterred down your face. Your lungs ached as you forced yourself to stay silent, refusing to wake the man beside you. You couldn’t let him see how he’d hurt you.

Davos shifted unexpectedly in his sleep, flinging his arm across you, and you flinched before realising it had been unintentional. His heavy forearm rested on the blankets over your stomach, his elbow sat at your waist, protective even unconsciously. Reluctantly, you admitted the warmth of him was nice, physically comforting even if betrayal still stung deep in your chest. You wrapped your fingers around his forearm, finally succumbing to sleep with sobs and one last sensation of his skin on yours.

*

You felt as though you’d had no sleep when noise awoke you in a cold bed. You were disorientated by the light streaming in, Davos moving militantly around the cabin as he collected clothes and supplies for his journey. One of the cabin’s huge hiking backpacks was sat on the coffee table, his clothes folded neatly beside it, and you sat up, staring blankly for a moment at the realisation he was packing.

Really, actually packing.

All of your belongings were left neatly in their makeshift places, your own backpack nowhere to be seen.

He was really actually packing.

To leave.

To catch a plane without you.

You couldn’t look at him as you got ready that morning, taking far too long changing in the bathroom as you took deep breaths in the mirror.

You didn’t look around to see his eyebrow-raise as you gathered your own possessions. The breakfast he had made sat uneaten on the counter.

Packing up the cabin was devastating, though blessedly quick.

You had always imagined leaving, that you might pen a little note to the next traveller who came through here, a Romantic note to the universe, a thanks for the little oasis you had sheltered from the desert of the world in.

You hadn’t anticipated frantically throwing bundles of loose clothes and blankets into the trunk of your car, steadfastly avoiding conversations with Davos as the sun set and you felt disgusting, hungry, and tired from a restless night of heartache.

“Are you okay?” were the first words he had said to you that morning.

You had shrugged a yes.

‘ _We communicate now, Davos,_ ’ was a million years ago in your mind. You should take a leaf out of his book, you wanted to punch something. The morning before you had been marvelling at just how much better he was. How attentive and self-reflective and communicative.

You had been wondering if ‘I love you’ would scare him away.

 _Fuck_.

“Fine.”

The pair of you climbed into the car and just _sat_ for a moment, your breaths ragged from the exertion of quickly packing, making tiny clouds dance in the air between your faces and the windshield.

“How far do you have to drive after this?” he asked casually, stretching his legs out in the passenger seat, one hand reaching up to trace the seal of the closed window.

“I have no idea,” you ground out, failing to sound remotely causal.

Davos’ expression was suddenly more intense, as he turned to you with a frown. There was such a seismic shift in the tense atmosphere of the car that you almost longed for the frenzy of the morning. At least you’d had an excuse for your attention to be drawn from him then. Now your eyes flickered nervously towards him, quickly drawn away again to the still forest beyond your bonnet.

He stretched his hands out, spreading his fingers before clenching them into a fist, unclenching his hands again.

“You don’t… know where you’re going?”

With an uncomfortable cough, you finally forced your shaking hands to turn the key, the car spluttering for a second before the engine finally gave a muted roar. The flap of startled bird wings erupted around you, muffled by the enclosed glass and metal of the car, and you had a moment of confusion as the distorted noise seemed strange. It sounded like being _inside_ , you realised.

The cabin hadn’t really… done that.

And yet just feeling enclosed in the car like that made your heart ache at the strange end of an era. You had just started to realise how much you would miss that building. You forced yourself to snap out of it. It wasn’t like you were ever planning on staying in the wilderness forever. You had to leave, even if it was just another grocery trip. Or something more permanent. Like this.

With a light shake of the steering wheel, you started to back down from the cabin, the overgrown plants around the clearing scratching at the Chevvy’s paintwork.

You ignored the way Davos was staring at you.

If he could sense the hurt you were hiding, the way you distanced yourself from him and didn’t reach for him like you used to, he said nothing.

“You didn’t give me much time to decide,” you told him coldly.

It was a frosty drive, and you could feel Davos fighting with himself to say something the whole time. He knew something was wrong. You knew you couldn’t articulate just what you wanted – you refused to try and drag him down from leaving American soil if that wasn’t what he wanted.

He didn’t want that.

He didn’t want you.

The thought made you clear your throat, blink back tears, and adjust the rear-view so you couldn’t see even the tiniest sliver of Davos’ grim expression.

It was a fight to keep your eyes on the road.

You wanted to yell at him. Kiss him. Stare at him until you couldn’t possibly hope to forget his face.

After all that time together, occasionally wishing for a break from him, you suddenly needed more time. But that wasn’t an option. There was a scheduled time for take-off, and Davos seemed determined to make it.

To leave.

With a lurch, you realised: _it can’t end like this._

The airfield came into view far quicker than you had expected, even as the agonisingly silent drive stretched on. Tarmac abruptly turning to a stony, unpaved road beneath your wheels, the death knoll of a polite sat-nav voice guiding you towards the small commercial airfield. The parking lot was easy to find, and you pulled in and parked up without exchanging a single look with Davos.

There was a crew around a small plane a mere fifty feet away, and they waved cheerily, all dressed in variations on workman’s trousers and a tank top.

You wondered once again how the hell they knew Danny.

When Davos stepped out of the car, you found yourself climbing out too, on a numb kind of autopilot. You couldn’t speak. Couldn’t meet his eye, for fear of breaking down. Davos seemed unaffected, clearing his throat gruffly. He had a single backpack slung over his shoulder, only containing the few dollars you’d forced him to take, spare sets of clothes pilfered from the cabin, and handful of photos. That was it.

He stood before you with even less than he’d arrived in America with.

A different man.

Returning to a part of the world he barely came from, his home gone.

You crossed in front of the car to approach him, your arms around his neck in a tight hug before you could overthink your goodbye. Somewhere nearby a lightweight plane was landing, propellors loud and engine spluttering as it slowed to land, coming down against a runway loudly. A horn beeped, an attendant of some kind shouted. Your toes dragged against the stony ground, his body warm as he silently pulled you to him so tightly he pulled you off your feet.

Davos’ plane was being loaded, nondescript boxes and crates behind stacked onboard by shouting men, and you hoped he’d have a seat upfront. And that the pilot was experienced. And that the weather was good. That nothing would topple over and risk his safety if turbulence hit.

You hoped he’d be safe. That his various complex layovers on the way back to Tibet would go well. That Danny had been careful who he’d trusted with Davos’ safety. You hoped he would understand your anger one day, that he’d realise how he’d let you down.

You hoped he’d miss you. At least a little bit.

You could already feel yourself missing him, even as his heart beat quickly against your own and his strong arms pulled your tightly against his torso. He was warm, his muscles as defined as you remembered they had been when he hugged you before he’d left K’un-Lun. This hug was more, it meant even more.

You had shared so much more. You’d known each other intimately, had confessed so much.

It seemed strange, that he was allowed to just wander off, be separated from you by oceans and countries. He knew more about you than anyone else on the planet. He held a piece of your heart, he’d seen you at your worst, looked after you, slept beside you each night.

And he was allowed to just step on that plane and leave.

You felt tears flowing as your face was hidden from him, your breaths coming in sobs against his body, and as you reached up to wipe the salty tear streaks from your own cheeks, you felt him hug you even tighter.

The pair of you refused to let go.

You couldn’t bear to look at him as you said goodbye, feeling the tensing of his muscles instead, the emotional gulp as he forced down his own words. After how he’d hurt you, after your pride refused to let you talk him into staying, you really still loved him. The realisation was so recent, even _thinking_ the word was like poking a fresh wound.

But it didn’t matter. He wanted to leave anyway. He still _didn’t need you_.

The shipment was all but loaded now, the flight crew for Davos’ flight securing things with straps and shouting to one another, doing last minute checks which were blurred by the tears swimming in your eyes.

“This is goodbye, then,” you commented thickly.

You felt Davos shudder against you.

“I’d say I’ll visit but… I’m guessing that can’t happen,” you joked, only making yourself cry more.

Davos stilled in your arms, frozen.

“You could,” he offered weakly, “You could –”

“I can’t, Davos,” you snapped, suddenly frustrated, overwhelmed, exhausted, “this is it.”

“Right.”

He let you go, his hands on your shoulders to distance you to arm’s length, but you refused to let go of him. Of course he knew you were crying, but you refused to let him see it.

“I’ll miss you,” he told you thickly, and you could feel him looking over his shoulder at the plane.

You could only nod.

Then you let your arms unravel from around his neck, stepping back, wiping your eyes and blinking away more tears.

He had been crying too. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face glistening with tear tracks, and your heart lurched at the realisation. But it changed nothing. He was a man of actions, not words. And actions told a different story to the tremble in his lip.

“I… words can’t express what you’ve done for me. I owe you everything. I hope you can get back to your life now. That I have not jeopardised it too much.”

“I don’t have much life to get back to,” you teased self-depreciatingly, your voice trembling.

You had to wipe your eyes again, tears escaping as you blinked.

“But you’re absolutely welcome.”

Despite it all, you found yourself meaning it, your voice cracking with sincerity and your mouth pressing into a watery smile. Davos stepped forwards, taking your hands in his, and you could see him desperately scanning your face for some way to _fix this_.

He couldn’t.

Because it seemed that he didn’t care for you like you cared for him, and now he could leave for a life he apparently truly wanted. And you tried not to begrudge him that.

A shout came from the plane behind him, and Davos turned, waving to one of the men who was approaching. They were holding back a little, and you were grateful for the tiny slice of privacy they gave you to say goodbye.

If only it had been on better terms.

“I have to go,” he told you apologetically, and you nodded your understanding.

Of course he did.

He detached his hands from yours, quickly darting forwards to press one last kiss to your forehead, and you took a second to marvel at just how much he had changed from the awkward warrior you’d known in K’un-Lun.

You couldn’t fathom how he would go back. Where he would go back _to._

His silent nods to the flight crew still spoke of a slightly unusual upbringing, the same mistrust of people you had seen in his eyes that day you arrived half-frozen at the Pass. The lingering feeling of his lips on your face was enough to remind you that, at least around you, he had grown into a different man. One who was able to love and to trust, to be fiercely caring, to channel with protectiveness into something which resembled a version of affection you could understand.

You were proud of him.

Happy to know him.

Devastated to lose him.

You realised you were staring at him, watching unseeingly as he walked towards the plane, his distant face showing concern as you stood alone on the periphery of the airfield, eyes red-rimmed and arms hugged to your body.

It took all your strength to turn away, to talk to your car, and clamber into the driver’s seat.

For a moment your fingers toyed with the ignition, before you let your face fall, and rest in your hands.

Finally, you let yourself sob aloud.

He was gone. With him, every little part of your life together. Gone were the nights spent cooking around fire, bickering over what could be foraged and what would make you ill, each morning Davos had traipsed for miles in the dawn light to fetch water without expecting a word of thanks.

You would never see that run-down cabin again, its rusting tool shed and patchwork waterproofing. The bed where you’d explored each other’s bodies for the first and only time, the couch where you’d argued and gotten drunk, where you’d bared your souls to one another, where you’d slowly fallen for him.

It was gone. That tiny oasis in the woods, the little bubble of safety Davos had helped you build, surrounded by forest which terrified you and without even a working water supply, it was just beginning to feel like _home_.

Distantly you heard the plane engine start up, preparing to taxi and finally take off, flying Davos back to where he felt he belonged.

You could see the shape of it in your rear-view mirror, your car parked facing away from it, but you didn’t care to watch.

Davos had let go of you, and you had to let go of him.

Once again your fingers toyed with the key, knowing you should get going. You should find somewhere, anywhere, to get a shower and a bed to sleep in.

There would be couches to crash on. Old friends who might offer you a hot meal and a strange look as you spent forty minutes trying to scrub months work of grime and stress off your body.

You could rebuild your life, patch up the hole K’un-Lun’s second-favourite son had torn in it.

You wondered about visiting Colleen, suspecting that, after all this, she might be more receptive to your intrusion. There was no one else better equipped to deal with the unique brand of heartache you were experiencing, after all. But she would want to know things, want to tell Danny. She was too close to it all.

If your debit card still worked you could probably get a few nights at a motel. You could gather your thoughts. Try and find housing, maybe a job. Your book was a distant dream, but you might get a few pieces in minor publications.

The thought of selling your story for a scant freelancer pay made your heart ache.

With a groan you let your head fall to the steering wheel, content just to sit and cry for a moment while you were parked somewhere you wouldn’t be moved on. The parking lot was occupied by all sorts: utility vehicles, delivery vans, extraordinarily expensive cars, and stunningly cheap ones.

If there was any reason your car stood out, it was because it was normal. And not empty.

You would have to sell it, you realised numbly.

The thought of it made you want to crumple right on the spot.

Getting rid of the memories from this car should have made you feel good. Happy. _Good riddance_ , you tried to remind yourself.

And yet all around you, you could feel his presence. The first time you and Davos curled up on the backseat together, touching each other only for warmth and for comfort on a cold night. The memory of your sheer horror when Davos had pried the keys from your hands to drive without permission brought a watery smile to your face now, the way he’d barely known how to act around you those first few days together.

Your heart still swelled at the first time you’d gotten a laugh out of him since prison. That was when you first felt you’d made the right choice, you realised.

Back then, you had promised yourself you’d stick by his side no matter what.

And you had. For as long as he had wanted you.

Then with one ‘get out of jail free’ card from Danny, he’d vanished.

The plane was barrelling down the runway now, and you watched as it detached itself from the tarmac and made a slow ascent into the sky, gaining height with whatever dodgy cargo it had aboard. And it’s not-so-secret stowaway.

You hoped he would be happy. That would make all this worth it. You would never know, of course. You doubted he would ever be in contact again. 

You hadn’t even given him your number, you realised glumly, he’d never asked.

But you could imagine him joining some Kung Fu academy high up in the snowy mountains, content to mediate and coach and never think about his strange stint in the American wilderness. Perhaps he would remember you with shame, or with a wistful but distant fondness, as he continued the cycle, teaching students skills he could no longer exercise himself.

If that was what he wanted, you wished him all the luck in the world.

Finally you twisted the key in the ignition and turned the engine over, hoping a long drive towards the nearest interstate might be enough time to clear your head.

Then you’d flip a coin. Choose which coast to head to. East or West.

You could begin the next chapter of your life too, even though it felt like you were looping back to the prologue. You could stumble forwards again, restarting your career at zero, forgetting everything which had transpired and living in faint fear of an official knock on your door.

You checked your phone then put it aside, putting the car into gear and reaching to disengage the handbrake. One more drive, and this could all be over.

Square one.

You stifled a scream as the passenger door swung open, fumbling to react before you suddenly recognised Davos’ shaggy hair, his oversized, underpacked backpack swung into the footwell as he invited himself to sit mutely in the seat beside you.

You were so numb your surprise dissipated almost instantly. You cut the engine, leaving the pair of you in a thick silence.

Face still puffy with tears, you refused to let yourself react. As he didn’t react, seemingly as shocked as you, you watched Davos warily.

“Did you miss your plane?” you finally demanded.

It was gone now, no longer visible. Not even a speck in the sky. The flight would already be over a different state. He would miss all his connections. If this was an accident, Davos had royally screwed up. You were already bracing for the yelling match as he called Danny.

Davos sighed.

“I had this pain, in my chest. As I stepped onto the plane.”

Seemingly unwilling to offer any more, Davos fell silent.

“That’s not good,” you offered pointlessly.

“No,” he agreed, almost murmuring, “not it’s not.”

You shifted in your seat, angling your body towards him a little as he began to speak.

“When we begin training to become the Iron Fist… they warn us of things. Trappings. Ways we can become distracted from the path and fail.”

He looked up at the cloudless sky, the stuttering of another prop plane engine starting distantly behind you. Davos cleared his throat.

“We give things up. Luxuries. You wear simple robes. Have no friends outside those who will aid you on your journey. Food which nourishes, but which we will not crave. No money, no breaks, no games or leisure.”

“I suppose Danny was my first mistake – a friend who could distract me. Show me how to enjoy myself. I don’t think I knew it was possible to break the rules before Danny fell from the sky and tried to break as many as he could.

“Then you came along. All frozen and curious and foreign. And you wanted to know who I was, for once.”

“Davos –”

“Please, let me finish.”

He shot you a glance, not of warning, but begging for you to listen. Saying ‘if I stop now, I may never finish this’.

“For the first time I realised why people fail. Why people aren’t strong enough to become the Iron Fist. I wanted to skip training. I thought about how I would spend an afternoon with you and Danny all through morning meditation, when on the outside I was simply tricking my Shifu.”

“You were a bad influence,” he half-joked, “but not in the way Danny was.”

“Danny would encourage me to break the rules for the sake of it. Because he found it fun. For you… I wanted to break the rules on my own. I _wanted_ to show you my home, I wanted to seem more exciting than I was, to give you things, spend time with you.”

He took a moment to breathe, but you couldn’t do the same. You were holding your breath, staring straight ahead, not registering the license plates and dusty parking lot you were looking at as you absorbed Davos’ desperate words.

“When I met Colleen, I couldn’t possible understand how Danny could want someone who had done such terrible things. Who was an agent for the Hand, and organisation we were taught to hate. He gave her a second change, and I thought him an idiot for it.

“But I got on that plane, and I started to realise, he was giving me a second chance too. And you have given me so many second chances, too many.

“So I think maybe, I understand why Danny chose Colleen. And maybe, that is why… you chose to help me.”

You nodded numbly, one hand resting on your thigh and the other gripping the bottom of the steering wheel as if it might prevent your emotional whiplash.

“I had no reason to get on that plane. Not when you are here, and K’un-Lun… its gone. I can accept that now. There is nothing I can do to bring it back. But I can… I can care for you. And build a new home. I don’t particularly care if it is in America, but if you want to be here, then I want to be here.”

His words were so sweet, you almost forgot about the practicalities. That relationships like yours and Davos’ were complicated, and needed communication, and couldn’t function simply on sincere words and vague declarations of affection.

You needed honesty.

“You told Danny you didn’t need me.”

His head fell forwards, a minute bow of disappointment, pieces seeming to fall into place.

“I did,” he told you, and you already knew the regret he felt. It was in his tone, bitter and clear as day. “‘Appear strong when you are weak’, Sun Tzu.”

You furrowed your brow in confusion, finally meeting Davos’ gaze. The intensity in his eyes, only amplified by the sheen of tears which collected at his waterlines, made your stomach clench.

“We are taught in every stance, with every strike, to protect our weak spots. My affection for you is my greatest vulnerability.”

Of course he wouldn’t tell Danny about his feelings for you. A man who refused to limp when he was hurt, refused to sleep when he was tired.

You were so used to seeing the honest side of him, being in his tiny circle of trust, you had forgotten the man he projected to the outside world.

“It really hurt me,” you told him weakly, not bothering to apologise for eavesdropping.

Davos seemed unbothered at the invasion of privacy. After all, there shouldn’t have been anything left to hide between you.

“I would never have lied to him, if I had known you would hear and believe me,” It took a second for his mind to catch up to etiquette, but when he apologised, you could tell he meant it with his whole heart, “I’m sorry.”

In the moments since he’d arrived in the car you’d stopped crying. Now you could feel the hot burn of tears in your eyes again. By the end of his speech, tears were falling again.

Davos looked stricken.

You knew he wouldn’t lie just to make you feel better. You honestly couldn’t see him spinning a yarn like that. He wanted to be here. He’d had the choice to leave, and he’d chosen to stay here. He wanted you – uncertain future and all.

You looked across the console at him, at the desperation in his face. Rejection seemed so natural to him, and yet you knew he didn’t shoulder it well. Who did?

He was braced as if for a fight, his training kicking in even as he expected the blow to be verbal, emotional.

His shoulders were squared off, his lip quivering with emotion. You could only think of one thing to say, your voice cracking.

“I love you.”

He gasped. Then he reached for you, the confined space making it awkward, and yet you let the centre divide of the car dig into you as you were pulled closely to his chest, his arms strong and tight and yet so comforting you felt invincible.

“I…” he was struggling to speak, his words rumbling in his chest as he spoke into your shoulder, “I love you. I love you too.”

He’d told you so already. In how he protected you. In how he spoke to you.

But hearing the words themselves took your breath away, so much so he loosened his arms, looking at your face with concern as he heard you gasp. You shook your head at his silent question, telling him _you haven’t hurt me_ , and he pulled you close again.

Surrounded by the rumble of takeoffs and landings, the shouting of crews who manned planes Davos could have been on, you let him told you tight.

The version of love he knew was so warped. It had done nothing but hurt him, abuse him. You hoped you could show him something else, could have the honour of showing him what those words really meant.

When the pair of you separated you couldn’t take your eyes off one another. As if you might blink and he’d vanish. As if Davos feared some imaginary force might whisk you away from him, if he stopped watching for a second.

But nothing tore you from one another, no cosmic force intervened, no matter how much Davos feared and expected it.

You dried your eyes, prompting Davos to rub roughly at his own face, his tears gone but the redness of exhaustion and emotion staying, bloodshot across the whites of his eyes.

“Where does this leave us?” you finally asked.

Davos leant his head heavily against his hand, his elbow braced on the window as he stared ahead through the windshield.

“I am no longer a hunted man, it seems. Perhaps we can lay low and find somewhere new to live? If that’s what you want.”

He seemed afraid you would still kick him out of the car, expecting rejection as much as he had when he sort-of convinced you to be his getaway driver all those months ago. His hand was perched on the seal of the window like he might have to run at a moment’s notice, shoulders tensed for whatever you said next.

“One night at a motel, and then we’ll start figuring things out,” you proposed.

He visibly relaxed, settling back into the passenger seat ready for the new hundred miles. Suddenly the future seemed brighter. Like you could face it, together.

“That sounds perfect.”

Davos was smiling lazily at you, still trembling from adrenaline, and you finally let yourself take him in without anger or shame. You could see now how exhausted he was, the bags under his eyes and the hollowness in his cheeks. His hair was long and shaggy, his beard unevenly shaved and growing back stubbornly quickly. Both of you were worn out, desperate for comfort and for affection.

Truthfully you could hardly wait to curl up in a motel bed with him, both of your showered and ready to sleep like the dead, until you had to take on the world together.

Davos still had to re-earn your trust.

You still wanted to finish your story.

Both of you were left with a long path ahead to finding out who you really were. Without the mantle he’d trained for his whole life, with his home gone, you knew it would be a difficult journey for Davos to figure out who he was. What did he stand for? Who did he want to be?

You felt optimistic he would manage that, given time. You were hopeful that maybe he could begin to grieve, to heal.

"Are you going to let me drive?" he joked weakly, a far cry from the man who had stolen your keys from your sleeping hand.

Though, you realised fondly, his cheekiness was still the same. You opened a map on your phone and pushed the device into his outstretched hand with a loving smile.

"No,” you smiled, “but lead the way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it to the end of this fic, congrats! This is the biggest thing I've ever written, it took about 4 months on and off, and editing a chapter a day for 9 days was hard work 😅 So I'm a bit emotional about it, and so proud its done.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Posting a new chapter every day! The fic is gonna be around 80k! 
> 
> Not sure if this is something many people will read, but let me know - thank you for reading :)


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